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.
Only two perks in column 3 and three in column 4 is already dissapointing by any weapons standards, but one of those slots is filled by the waste of space that is En Garde, a perk in dire need of a buff. Assassins Blade is neat paired with Tireless, but you have better swords and perks you could be pairing with it. Relentless Whirlwind is a classic, but other swords nowadays have that combo on a better DPS frame or just have better stats.
For a Crucible Sword, its awful in PvP. Tireless and Assassins Blade is about all it has going for it, because ranged swords and lunging perks exist leaving this basic bitch Adaptive in the dust. A perk rework would do wonders for this sword, especially given the Void-synergising perks introduced recently, but I guess not. For now, bring it for the lore and the basic bitch Relentless + Whirlwind combo or throw it in the Gunsmiths melting pot for a handful of mats and rep and try not to listen to the screams of pain.
Based on the above damage chart, imo the ideal pve roll would be Jagged Edge/Heavy Guard/Relentless Strikes/Whirlwind Blade/Impact mw. Using the Light/L/L/Heavy combo for a nice balance of dps and total dmg. This combo pairs with Relentless Strikes to give you ammo mid combo.
In pvp if you want to use a legendary sword, you want to be using the year 1 hagakure sword as it has the most range out of the adaptive swords