So, check out the changes and one of the most interesting things is the dollar amounts are down by quite a bit. I would consider that a win by it's self

Maybe. I don't know the exact dates but the STEEM price (and therefore dollar value of rewards) is unfortunately down quite a bit over the past couple of months, and some of the decline is due to the reallocation of inflation/rewards (though maybe the latter is still a plus, overall).

I think what you are getting it as a lot of reward milking being returned to the pool by downvotes and redistributed more broadly, and there is indeed clearly a lot of that given the massive downvoting of many $50-100+ "Trending" posts, but how responsible that is for the decline in numbers here is less clear.