Tarlo
Basilisk Collar was a controversial talent which massively buffed our single-target, yet did relatively little on AoE. This discrepancy made Beast Mastery difficult to tune properly, as any buffs to our AoE outside of very specific spells meant our single-target would go through the roof. Removing power from this talent was therefore the right way to go, while buffing our other spells. It is still a massively powerful talent.
In spite of these changes intending to be "relatively neutral", they do result in a decent single-target nerf of 4-5%, which is a little disappointing. Beast Mastery
was very powerful in single-target, albeit partially inflated in statistics due to being a popular target of
Power Infusion, which we still should be. Overall we should be fine enough off in terms of our single-target damage in raid. We make a small swap in our talents from a point of
Basilisk Collar to a point in
Wild Instincts, which is why our
Power Infusion value is largely maintained.
In terms of AoE, the changes result in a net ~14% buff, as well as a few talent changes, similarly swapping off a point in
Basilisk Collar in favor on other talents, depending on the build. These changes aren't necessarily sufficient to make Beast Mastery a meta or even great Mythic+ spec, but seeing as we were possibly the worst spec in Mythic+ in terms of damage previously, they are quite welcome still. The changes make Pack Leader slightly better than previously but not better than Dark Ranger still.
These changes are all a smaller part of the larger changes coming to the spec with 11.0.5, which will rework some base mechanics of the spec and the Dark Ranger Hero Tree. This will further improve our AoE.
