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.
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This sword and Night Terror are the only two swords in the game that roll Counterattack in the third column. The fourth column damage perks are the same between the two (well, NT gets One for All; not my cup of tea on a sword, but maybe yours). Night Terror is an adaptive, this is a vortex.
My take on this fact is that you use this sword with Counterattack/Valiant Charge for burst movement into a huge attack that deletes something. The only other sword that rolls that combo is Goldtusk, and while many swords roll Counterattack, these two are the first ones that can roll it alongside a gap-closing perk to my knowledge. Keying both the extra lunge distance and the counterattack damage off guarding one attack is a super cool idea. Just kind of unfortunate that you can't run either sword on a Titan. Stronghold with VC Throne Cleaver is fun in its own way, but that sword doesn't roll Counterattack, so gotta make do with Lucent Blades instead.
You can also pair Counterattack with Whirlwind, Vorpal, or Surrounded, much like Night Terror but on Falling Guillotine's frame. Whirlwind Blades ends if you guard, so probably not worth pairing with it, and Surrounded is situational while Vorpal is a smaller but very consistent bonus to the kinds of things you'd want to Counterattack anyway. I think the movement option of Valiant Charge is probably more worthwhile, but if you are already confident in your ability to close the gap (perhaps you're running Icarus Dash or Strapple), it might be worth it to you to double up on damage perks. Especially true if you're trying to DPS a strike boss or whatever and they stomp your guard constantly, leading to high Counterattack uptime.
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Next idea: Destabilizing Rounds. Currently the perk rolls on one primary weapon (Hero's Burden SMG from IB), two shotguns (Basso Ostinato and Nessa's Oblation), one wave-frame GL (Harsh Language), one heavy GL (Regnant), and this sword. Personally, for season 20, I'd skip Destabilizing Rounds on most things, only because Volatile Flow is in the artifact so it's not hard to get high uptime on Volatile Rounds, and for a Warlock-exclusive sword specifically I can't think of much reason to do so in terms of the Warlock kit (maybe I'm missing something, like an interaction with Devour I don't know about?). When Volatile Flow is gone, it could make more sense, but you could still just run a Chain Reaction sword instead and wipe out packs of enemies (granted, Destabilizing Rounds has a bigger radius, but probably not enough so that I'd choose it). Even outside of this sword, most of the Destabilizing Rounds weapons are just outclassed by other things (why use Harsh Language when Forbearance exists?). If this wasn't a Warlock exclusive, I'd say maybe Stylish Executioner could justify it, but alas.
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Third idea: Demolitionist. Out of all swords, only Bequest and Hero of Ages also roll that perk. Hero of Ages rolls it with Chain Reaction, so that's my first instinct if you want a Demo sword. Bequest can do Demo/Wellspring or Demo/Energy Transfer if you really want to lean into using your sword to prop up an ability loop of some kind. Those are both Arc, so if you can justify needing a Demo sword that is specifically Void for your Warlock (easy to do in a season with Volatile Flow/Bricks from Beyond in the artifact; probably harder in the future), then Demo on this sword makes sense, and you should pair it with Energy Transfer as another comment suggested.
What this sword has that other weapons don't is its ability to roll Demolitionist and Energy transfer PLUS its infinite guard, it will help you get both ability up quickly as long as you use it to guard and kill stuff. The origin trait technically helps with this as well, but I doubt it'll ever shave off more than a couple of seconds in practical use. This will be the roll I'm chasing for low-mid tier content, I don't know if the risk of using a sword in general will be worth it in anything harder.
In pvp, uh, it's sword. Use it to chop people dead.
So, nice sword, am still bummed us warlocks don't have a unique sword frame but this is kinda neat.
Anyway, PvP first - its not terrible. And thats because of Valiant Charge. The PvP Sword meta is dominated by Eagers Edge and things with projectiles, so Valiant Charges sort-of Eagers lunge makes it mildly useable compared to most other Vortex frames.
For PvE, you can go a few paths. You've got classic sword damage options like Relentless/Whirlwind, Destabilising Rounds has potential if built around, this sword has Counterattack in slot 3 which could make for some interesting damage setups, and Valiant Charge allows for some memey shenanigans with high speed lunging heavy attacks - very fun, if not very viable.
Overall, Death's Razor is a fine sword. A little below the pinnacle and Endgame grades, but it serves well in the niches it holds. But it will never surpass Falling Guillotine as it is. Why? Because its class locked, and the latter isn't. Justice for the Aggressive and Lightweight Frames! No, I will never drop this argument! Free the class locked swords!