Yeah, mostly optimized builds and sets were considered against each other. The more armor you're wearing, the more strength you'd want.
A strength build can still survive an extra hit in light armor, but you're still going down in a few hits. An agi build with high armor will take a heavy hit to wpf without sufficient IF. If you're going to be taking IF anyways, it'll just be easier to focus a bit more on strength since an agi build with 65hp in armor isn't going to tank all that much and one with 50hp isn't going to swing godly fast, just slightly faster than others in that armor.
Balanced builds get the best of everything, but the IF change helped curb off 24/24 from dominating everything, and instead going 21/24, 24/21, 18/27, or 27/18 for the most reliable pure builds.