Not surprising the playerbase want to keep their little crutches a bit longer.
Yes overdriven, you should be punished for creating one trick pony horse archer who don't even use melee weapon, just bow and 3 slots of arrows.
You can argue all you want for "riding" being a crutch as there are ways of making Cav arguements worth considering... But are you seriously claiming that "athletics" is a crutch?
Regardless.
How will this even solve ANY of the 18/18 or 21/21 archer builds which will STILL outpace your "balanced" melee builds if this suggestion was implemented. The only melee builds that I see who have "even" stat allocation of 18/18 or the like and thus can take advantage of your proposed system for fast athletics are shielders, which can't to shit to catch up to a lightly armoured non-slow-ass-shield using archer.
The ironic thing is, Archer Builds are more "Stat Balanced" with the STR/AGIL ratios then Melee Builds are on average.
So now, archers will outrun everything with a pulse still, 6 ATHL archers will still be a dime a dozen, 7 ATHL archers will be a bit more rare, and STR Melee builds will dominate AGIL Melee builds more then ever...
What?