The other possibility is that they changed how armor affects speed/athletics so even 5 weight armor (which is light armor) significantly nerfs the benefit of athletics. So you see these strength builders with 1-2 athletics keeping pace with 6 weight armor agility builds with 8 athletics. Why not go strength?? I don't have the patch notes but its pretty obvious something was done in january patch.
I don't know why paul keeps avoiding this issue when its been pretty obvious for a long time that athletics/run speed/armor weight effect/acceleration have somehow been significantly nerfed since January. Would love to see more balance between strength and agility. I remember people with 6 athletics actually being significantly faster than people with 2 athletics pre-january and it just sucks that between exponentionally increasing wpf costs and this athletics nerf that agility builds got hammered despite already having a disability of dying in 1-2 hits compared to 7-8 of strength and high armor builds.