My exact usb device is
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:8812 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8812AU 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WLAN Adapter
Maybe I just got a lucky 8812au that works in 7.0.3
I even queued up some random 20/30/40 mbit mkvs to play all last night on repeat, and all played with no errors logged and still playing when i woke up this morning.
Still no idea what changed in the driver that messed things up though.