Q: What are masterwork rolls?
A: Most legendary weapons are capable of being Masterworked. The masterwork system is a way for you to upgrade your favorite weapons to their maximum potential.
Q: What does it take to upgrade a weapon to a masterwork?
A: Upgrading your weapons, in broad terms, takes a small amount of glimmer, legendary shards, and, most importantly, Enhancement Cores.
Depending on what Tier your weapon is at, the requirements to raise it to the next tier increase the closer the weapon is to being fully masterworked (Tier 10).
Q: What benefits do I get for masterworking a weapon?
A: Each tier that you increase your weapon will grant a small buff to a single stat, chosen randomly when the item drops.
Beyond that, at Tier 5 you gain access to a kill tracker. At Tier 10, your multi-kills will generate orbs of light.
Q: So what are these "masterwork roll" stats?
A: These are the possible stats that upgrading your weapon will grant a bonus to. Depending on what tier you are at, you can grant anywhere from 1-10 additional points in any of the stats listed to your weapon.
Q: Any catch with this?
A: The Bungie API currently says that all weapons can potentially roll with all stats as their masterwork stat. This obviously isn't accurate, as Blast Radius isn't applicable to, say, Auto Rifles.
The list you see on this page is trimmed to only show stats that actually appear on the weapon. However, it is possible that Bungie has additional logic behind the scenes that further filters these
possibilities to, for example, prevent certain items from being able to have an Impact masterwork. Until Bungie modifies the API files to 100% accurately display which masterwork stats are possible on
each item, take what you see here with a pinch of salt.
PvE I find this one interesting as well. It being a shotgun doesn't suit well for most endgame PvE but there is an interesting perk here with discord. This is the only elemental special weapon that can roll discord aside from the comp sniper and seasonal one. This means u essentially have infinite ammo for the duration of the perk being active, provided you are one shotting combatants.
This makes running double special even easier and more powerful. Pair this with the iron banner fusion with discord- get one kill with either weapon and then proceed to trade the perks of each other and have completely infinite special ammo.
I think Bungie played it safe with the weapons they gave discord to, but if this perk ever comes to a fusion or a trace rifle, there could be some really interesting double special loadouts.
I did a run of RoN with double special, ad clearing this whole run and was spamming my iron banner fusion with discord. Never ran out of ammo once throughout the entire raid (each encounter I lost maybe 2 shots total). Discord may not always be viable when ads won't get one shot but it is super fun to use.
With NBP, this shotgun is the most braindead way to trigger your overshield and health regen. Simply get a kill with another weapon, swap to this, and you'll have Discord activated. Kill two minor enemies (for no ammo cost bc of Discord) and then you'll have a free overshield and health regen. Keep looping this to refresh your overshield and gain the 35% damage buff on top of it.
And I haven't even addressed the left column perks. A lot of people are going to lean for subsistence, but I am telling you to avoid this if you're using Discord. It does nothing while Discord is active. Discord will already refund a bullet on a kill making subsistence pointless. My recommendations would either be Pugilist or Threat Detector.
Pugilist is really special on this gun for melee builds. Pugilist gives you a whopping 20% energy back per kill on shotguns. When you pair this with Discord and use it for add clear, you pretty much have a mini Monte Carlo in terms of energy returned. I pair this with No Backup Plans and the throwing shield to easily reobtain overshields.
I understand this is a long winded review, but this shotgun is one of the most unique weapons in the game currently. Discord is a really special perk and I hope more people catch on to how fun a gun like this can be.
Is it the best gun ever? No, definitely not. Is it one of the most fun guns we've had in a long time? Yup.
However, since its stats are so abysmal, Bungie wasn't afraid to load it up with good perks. Opening Shot/Rampage is probably the best that you'll find for PvP. This perk combo is currently exclusive to Last Man Standing. This wasn't always the case; this perk combo could also be found on Parcel of Stardust and Mindbender's Ambition. However, Parcel's been sunset, and both perk's are absent from Mindbender's reissued version. Likely because combining this perk combo with Adept mods and Mindbender's above average stats would screw up the Crucible again. I'm still bitter about that; this was Mindbender's CURATED roll. At least it's back though, even if it's on a different shotgun. I guess you could say that Last Man Standing's the last man standing, hm?
Anyway, it's a good perk combo. If you don't like Opening Shot, Threat Detector is also in the third column. And if you're a shotgun ape, you can grab Swashbuckler in the fourth column. For PvE, Subsistence and Pugilist are in the third column, and One-Two Punch and Swashbuckler are in the Fourth Column. I've also heard that Subsistence and Discord pair well, because their "refill magazine on kill" effects stack. Personally, I think that you can make this gun work in PvE, but why bother. You can focus Mindbender's for 2 Vanguard engrams, and that shotgun's got some nice PvE perks in its pool.
[TL:DR] Worst in class performance balanced out by best in class perk selection. There's some really elusive rolls here that are definitely worth trying.
This is currently the only shotgun with Discord BUT it's in the 4th column slot. I would have loved to have farmed up a "Discord + OFA" with assault mag. Put on No Back Up plans and bam. Add-clear shotty. Rocking like a 70%+ damage boost before Surge mods.
But it wasn't meant to be. So this one is a pass for me.