The black dot shaft was plywood, flat laminated. I felt the dot did make some sense on that. On other types of maple laminates or natural maple shafts...well maybe not so much. From snooker I'm used to orienting my shaft a certain way, because the shaft has chevrons on it (ash). These work like natural arrows and are both pleasing to the eye and helpful for aiming. Also orienting the cue the right way is part of the pre shot routine. As far as spine effects, I doubt that is a big part of the perceived improvements from doing this.
It was like that when I had the black dot shaft, just a routine, though for the black dot I couldn't tell much difference, even though I probably should have. It was just a thing to do before I shot the shot.
The black dot meucci shot was not a very good product. They had a problem with warping, delaminating and other issues. Also they didn't play all that well IMO. For instance their advertised deflection was not close to the real life performance, where it was clearly outmatched by Predator 314. The black dot would vibrate in weird ways on power shots and generally not feel very solid. They quickly fell out of fashion where I live.