I haven't managed to master voting power. I tried for awhile. Then I stopped. I currently vote comments 15-20% and posts 100%. Sometimes I'll tweak the comment value up, but I really don't vote lower than that.
Likely diluting my power and not maximizing it, but I decided I rather spend my time calculating other things. LOL. :)
This was back in August or so... then a few months ago when they added the slider for everyone.
Yeah I noticed with the tools made available to see the results. As a new comer to the Steemit platform, I started mostly on creating my "thirds rule strategy" which did not attract a lot of traffic. So learning that an "introduceyourself" was not necessary but recommended would garner a new comer better exposure and possibly better rewards. During the first few weeks reading and voting and commenting with not a lot of SP had taking my Voting Power down dramatically without me even knowing or understanding this whole time. So I will admit that I did NOT do as the recommendation of the Steemits community had offered. Learning the hard way seems to work for me, or anyone who is passionate enough. I don't regret anything which allowed me to quickly recover, earn trust, and quickly find who is who and what is what. It's about quality, NOT quantity.