Answer
Many distinct values with fairly even load, so no shard gets hot, and a match with the access pattern, so most requests touch one shard. A key that spreads data perfectly but forces every query to ask all shards is a bad key.
Sharding · Flashcard
Many distinct values with fairly even load, so no shard gets hot, and a match with the access pattern, so most requests touch one shard. A key that spreads data perfectly but forces every query to ask all shards is a bad key.