This is a good idea, as reputation can be grown without much steem. I also understand how new users with valid comments could be discouraged by the change.

How about a middle ground? Comments are ranked by upvote value (descending) first, then for equal upvote values they are sorted descending by reputation. However the reputation sort would be delayed by 8 hours, so new users will have 8 hours to make an impact and gain upvote before the reputation sort. Thoughts?