This is an important point that's generally neglected. The reason you need to point a cab at your ears is because the cone drivers used in bass cabs beam at mid/high frequencies, above about 1kHz or so. So, unless your cab is a constant-directivy design (like a proper PA), you'll only hear those crucial frequencies when your head is directly in front of the cab. Most tweeters fitted to bass cabs don't help either because they don't produce much below 5kHz and the cheap bullet tweeters normally used also squirt the sound forwards in a tight beam.
So, tilting a cab might help the player standing directly in front of it (just don't move to the side) but, in those instances when the bass isn't going through the PA, it actually makes it worse for the audience because the mid/high freqencies are now being squirted at the roof.
Taller cabs or cabs on stands are easier for the player to hear, of course, as their ears are closer to the drivers. But even then, unless you have a constant directivity design cab, your audience is still going to hear the indistinct, muffled sound that is typical of the bands I hear playing in small venues around here. The solution is a cab that's been designed to be used on the ground and that delivers the same sound to the player as to the audience by crossing over to a midrange driver or HF horn before the beaming becomes a problem.