Fair Share

Can someone explain the concept of Fair Share and what is the optimal damage one should deal in a raid? Both in and out of a guild raid.

“Fair Share” (FS) is easy. It is simply the monsters original health, divided by the maximum players who can join.
as for what it does, I was told that you couldn’t recieve any epic, and were unlikely to recieve any rare loot, unless you did at least “Fair Share” of damage. Since I DID recieve an epic loot item (once) off a guild raid where I only did half of FS, I am not sure it really applies. Perhaps they meant to say you were “garunteed” to get an epic item if you did FS?
As for “Optimal Share” (OS)- Someone, somewhere decided that if you did MORE damage than OS to a single monster, you were just wasting your Honor/Stamina. In terms of items you recieve, you would be better off hitting something else.
Of course, If the monster doesn’t DIE before time runs out, no one gets any items, and everybody’s stamina/honor has been “wasted”.

Thanks for the info!

I am but a lowly Nub, unversed in the ways of DotD, but… could someone point me in the direction of where this Fair Share and Optimal Share malarkey was actually endorsed by someone directly involved in the game, as opposed to a verbatim rumour-mill rumbling from the more prolific and high-end item farmers? All I have seen of it is word-of-mouth, and all I have seen of it in action is that it massively harms raids, by ensuring participants are more interested in maximising the number of raids they are in than ensuring the raids they are in are successfully completed. The concept seems sound enough: a full raid has everyone doing their fair share, but since the basic “HP divided by maximum raid participants” seems to conveniently omit how many raids rarely are full, it seems a shade more counterproductive than efficient. And yes, when it comes to guild-based raids (as opposed to guild raids themselves), such things are a little easier, especially once everyone starts grinding their levels and gear. But for something to become a commonplace acronym is really quite startling without something slightly more substantial than hearsay, so if anyone has an origin for this, it would be wonderful to know of it.
Many thanks for any suggestions or replies.

I realize this is incredibly late and you have probably already found it but I’ll post it just in case.

This document is what you are looking for.

This thing just says what the FS and OS it, its in in no way a proof that they are the most effective ways to raid.

Originally posted by Kevlar33:

As for “Optimal Share” (OS)- Someone, somewhere decided that if you did MORE damage than OS to a single monster, you were just wasting your Honor/Stamina. In terms of items you recieve, you would be better off hitting something else.
Of course, If the monster doesn’t DIE before time runs out, no one gets any items, and everybody’s stamina/honor has been “wasted”.

Ok, but how to calculate OS?

10man: FS * 1.25
50man: FS * 2.20
100man: FS * 2.30
250man: FS * 1.0
500man: FS * 1.50

To explain OS and FS you have to go back to how items are looted at the end of each raid : it is damage based therefore someone hitting by himself 20m on a normal erebus (fs 600k) will get better and more loot than someone barely hitting 600k.
The FS has someone explained is the garantee of looting at least one epic loot and often 2. but you may sometimes get epic loot with a lot less damage than that exept that you will only get 1 epic loot for every 10 raids.
Now the OS seems for me to be the point where the damage you deal becomes counter productive in term of dmg/loot ratio. to continue the example of the 20m on a normal erebus you will get 2 times the loot someone with FS on the same erebus would get even tough you hit around 35 times more than the fs. There is also the possibility that OS is just a mix between what i said and what gura_uk said : that its just to incentive people to hit more so that raids die even when they aren’t full

You all are forgeting one aspect that is important. The loot you receive is related to the time it takes to finish the raid. Shorter time = better chances of better loot.