Whoops - i let that last comment slip through - still getting the hang of this!

Yes if all rewards are off the rep is not affected by downvotes.

What they are doing to accounts like mine is auto upvoting my comments so they can downvote them hard with a high rep account and drive my rep down one comment at a time.

When I fully get the hang of this I'll do a post about it (not on Hive) and start giving people the link - but at this point I'm better off to keep this low key for a few weeks