Any game I have ever played the mounted combat is always either insanely strong or incredibly weak. I personally prefer the latter simply because the other option usually is extremely boring to play and extremely annoying to play against.
I know people want to have big mounted zergs and just wash over people but it's really not that exciting to be on the receiving end.
I think mounteds could use less point investments in the parent skills to encourage more people to play them which in a way increases their effectiveness, cause right now as it stands you either have a mount to travel or to fight.. not really much in-between.. and since mounts die so quickly anyway I wouldn't mind if some fights started off mounted then transitioned into foot fights.
MC is fun imo. If you mean just combat while mounted then I dunno, imo it has to be kinda strong because that's the only risk to transporting.
I mean, the parries haha, that's why people are running MA. And like dude said you can't MC pve. I remem MCing pve in 1 when you got the rhythm right vs w/e mob as long as it didn't have ranged. I don't think that's possible anymore.
MO2 is just all ways worse in combat imo.
But speaking ONLY mounted v mounted:
As I said before, even a simple change like being able to aim with crosshairs massively buffed MA (imo.) Lore + dmg, buffs MA, lower horse health, same. Just like armor nerfs MC. We still don't have a horse type that 'wears armor' better.
MO1 had 'good MC,' but it just had good parts at different times. Haha. They should know by now how to put them all together and what made it OP, etc. MA+MM was a meme before and it still is. Should not be possible. Before it was more like Fatmages w/ lo str bows tho. They also did the dex turn thing, but I think if axes were still legit I'd take my chances vs a MA on my 110 str stout khur w/ MC. iirc MA could fire to both sides in 1, or am I tripping? So you'd just have to really cut off their firing side and pound them out.
It's a bunch of half baked shit as usual. I def support mounted combat, but mounted combat should be for ganking transports and fighting other mounteds, most of all, not so much owning foot. And that + magery shit needs to go. I remem the lance fat mages with MA in 1. I was like omg how cheezy can u get. Clown hammers were somethin, but the axe MC was pretty good until they made it so you needed TM. They should know what works by now in terms of dmg, swing arc, but they have to understand the risk that a MC has to take in order to engage, so some adjustments need to be made.
I can see armor slowing the accel of a MC, but I dunno if it should slow the top speed. Maybe that's the missing skill that needs to be under MC, some sort of armored riding that gives you back top speed in legit armor, but makes it so that it still affects your acceleration. HMM.
And NAH MAs, you don't get that! Otherwise it would be all for naught. It should be something that only works w/ a wep out and if you switch off to mage or pull a bow you fall off