It would. It therefore ends up like any other (imbalanced) choice—it needs to be balanced against its opportunity costs.
That can be done in either of two ways. You remove any extrinsic benefit and any extrinsic opportunity cost (no talent cost and no removed class utility) or you balance Lone Wolf to be sufficiently throughput- and utility-laden to compensate for its cost in talents and utility.
The second is a balancing nightmare, leaving only two real choices:
- Make it baseline and separate extrinsic utility from the pet (which would inadvertantly allow pet choice again), or…
- Remove it.
Personally, I don’t think mastering beasts should necessarily be required of anyone but Beast Mastery, marksmanship of anyone but Marksmanship, or use of survival tools of anyone but Survival, but I could see also why people want there to be less thematic breadth available to Hunters and for each spec to play more similarly.
Gameplay wise, either outcome is fine to me, as I tend to use a pet for its utility even when others would still favor Lone Wolf for a middling 2 or 3 target advantage.
I just don’t want to continue to be obliged to call and dismiss my pet. Let either single route be sufficient until we have use for, or are hampered by, actually using the pet as a pet, not an unlock for abilities that have nothing directly to do with controlling a second unit.