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.
So, Zephyr got some work done. It lost an awful lot of trash perks, and gained some good ones in its place. First off - Rimestealer. Star of the show, pairs quite obviously with Cold Steel. 3 Light attacks or 1 Heavy 1 Light will freeze a target, at which point defeating them grants a stack of Frost Armour. Granted thats not the easiest to proc consistently when most enemies will die in that amount of sword swipes, which is why Relentless Strikes is also an excellent pairing option, since it will restore 1 ammo in that many Light attacks. Chain Reaction is also fun, but its probably better on a different sword frame. Attrition Orbs is horrrible - 10 hits per orb? No thanks. And Valiant Charge is a funny perk, though you can instead craft it on a Leviathan Sword and have funny lunge heavies instead. Other than that, Surrounded is here, but this won't be beating out Bequest with its craftableness and slightly higher Impact stat - still, not the worst option out there.
Overall, a nice reprise all told (especially considering what got axed), but honestly? You're either here for Rimestealer/Relentless Strikes + Cold Steel, or some more obscure roll no review would ever sway you away from. So have fun with that, I guess. Oh, and this gets PvP points for Valiant Charge+Vorpal. Do use either an Exotic, a Caster, or an Eager Edge though if you must use a sword in Crucible, though.