But... that's exactly what athletics is used for. You can never be ganked if you have enough. You can make every fight 1v1. If you don't have 7+ athletics, people can gank you and surround you.
Totally agree, I use 7 athletics myself. The thing is though, even in a 1v1 you can be killed just because a stupid teammate comes over. Happens to me all the time.
Say you're fighting some str stacking douche. Then a teammate thinking he's going to be helpful comes over. Str douche swings his axe, you go to block it when your stupid teammate taps you and you drop your block. You are now dead. Str builds don't need to be good, just lucky.
Now when you get into a situation on NA where a lot of people favor strength, it gets annoying. Takes me about 3-5 hits to kill the average player, whereas they can kill me in 2. Often times 1 with a head hit and I wear lordly armor.
I prefer to have higher athletics, but the benefits for stacking strength do outweigh the benefits for stacking agi. Still, I don't think I'd change anything. "Balanced" games often are boring games.