Yes, I can add a “before” screenshot in the next update.
The reason WP moved it to the top was to actually fix an accessibility bug. When you click the “reply” link on a comment, the focus point jumps to the textarea. Pre-4.4, that was really bad for people on screen readers because you just skipped them over half the form (name, email, URL fields). Moving the textarea to the top “fixed” that, but it was only a Band-Aid because it was impossible to account for what fields plugins were still adding to the top.
Another solution was built to simply jump the focus point to the first focus-able field in the comment form, regardless of what that field was.
However, they didn’t revert the original change, which wasn’t really a fix at all for the original problem. Having the textarea at the top has its merits though. Many folks prefer it that way.
That’s the short version. You can follow along with the entire progression of this change in these tickets:
* https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/29974
* https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/34731
