I'm sleepy , therefore sorry if i mess things up in my post.
Archers are still good imo. After playing for a while, i just realised that they still dish out decent enough damage in a decent amount of time, from a good distance.
Now, using an argument of " we can't kill a magical creature (and plated chargers will be, if not already, magical creatures, i rarely see one nowadays) so we want pierce damage back" is not right if you ask me.
Pikes, spears , xbows, throwers are the new cav counters and every day i can see them improving in fighting against horses. Archers on the other hand can be a good counter to xbowmen and throwers + they can still kill light horses (and,obviously, regular infantry aswell).
I see almost no heavy cav on the servers nowadays in the first place, so i don't really get what is this all about to be honest. Archery is fine now, other ranged weapons need some slight changes though.