User blog comment:Amethystamy/Lotus, Will you ever give up your Death Tourch?/@comment-2085557-20100929060754

You were told wrong. Dealing a ton of damage and/or dumping a lot of stamina will help you unlock loot slots. What items go into those loot slots is entirely random. There is also a diminishing returns for loot slots. Example: For Lotus, to unlock 1 epic slot you need to do about 300k. To unlock the second epic slot, you need 1.4M. This is the reason people are sitting in on certain damage amounts because they want the optimal usage of their stamina/energy for loot.

Monsters are supposed to be a team game. Everyone should do their share. Someone hogging all the health of the monster will get no better loot than his teammates doing less (slightly altered by the intro of legendary drops). On the other hand, teams sitting on a low damage count for "efficiency" will have their monster flee (thus no loot) if they don't do enough damage to kill it.