Battle Fury nerfed

Hands of Midas has been a solid item already for different patches, but it wasn’t used also because there were better options in the early game, such as Battle Fury and Wraith Band.

After the changes to cleave brought by 7.20, Battle Fury became extremely popular as a farm accelerator item.

Prior 7.20, the cleave mechanic ignored the amount of armor possessed by a hero, while now it works as a normal physical damage type. To balance this change, IceFrog increased both the damage and the radius of Battle Fury.

This is a nerf against heroes with high armor values - and generally against most heroes in the late game - but at the same time, it is a buff against opponents with a poor base armor, such as creeps.

Battle Fury became more efficient than in the past as a neutral creeps killer, so many heroes abused it. An extreme example is Terrorblade: his illusions do not benefit from the extra raw damage nor from the cleave effect, but many players still bought it to accelerate the farm speed of the hero.

7.21 massively nerfed Battle Fury as the percentage damage bonus against non-hero units changed to be a fixed amount. Before, the passive Quell provided a bonus equal to 50%/25% of the base attack damage, while now it grants only a flat 24/7 attack damage bonus.

Wraith Band and primary attributes changes

7.20 removed Ring of Aquila from the game because it was overused both in pub and pro games, but simultaneously it drastically buffed Wraith Band, Null Talisman, and Bracer.

These items (Wraith Band in particular) were so efficient that most players stacked three or more of them in every game.

The situation calmed down a bit after consecutive nerfs from 7.20b to 7.20e, but these early game items were still overpicked, so Valve readjusted the meta again in 7.21:

Heroes no longer gain 25% more benefit from their primary attributes (affects attributes from both items and the hero)

Before, all the heroes had extra benefits from their primary attribute; which were particularly strong for agility-based heroes as the earned attack speed, armor, and movement speed. They became dominant in the mid-late game, and quite resilient thanks to all the extra armor.

Now, stacking stats items (such as Wraith Band) provides a lot less value than in the past.

Also, starting from 7.21, all the heroes received an extra amount of primary attributes for free:

All heroes’ primary attribute growth values increased by 15%

The two changes above increased the attractiveness of items that are not attribute-based, and influenced also the popularity of Hand of Midas thanks to the substantial 40 attack speed bonus at a fair price.