This came up in cabal discussion, and it was suggested that it would be a useful topic for our forums.
Glyphs have the same amount of stats on them regardless of what item you glyph. A head talisman's glyph will be the same as a minor talisman's for example.
Weapon Glyphs are a bit different, as you will only gain the stat bonus from the weapon you are using - they do not stack. For that reason, in most cases, it's best to put the same glyph into both your weapons, so that your stats remain constant across all your attacks. For this reason, we normally count the weapon glyphs as only one slot, even though there are two of them.
Glyphs come in 3 types:
Intricate (3 pips)[/:m]
Simple (2 pips)[/:m]
Crude (1 pip)[/:m][/list:u]
In an ideal world, all your glyphs will be intricate. In practice, intricates don't have a very high drop rate, so you may choose to use some simple glyphs while you wait for MoF to buy intricate, or for them to drop if you're feeling optimistic (or cheap like me).
Glyphs level up just like talismans - empowerment and fusion. Using the same type of glyph will give extra glyph xp. Fusion requires the same stat on the glyph, but you can have different pips just like with talismans.
You can empower a glyph either before or after you put it into an item. BUT once you have fused a glyph to an item, you cannot sacrifice it in a fusion without first extracting it. So if you have a simple glyph slotted and you get an intricate, you'll need to either destroy or extract the simple glyph before you can put the intricate into that item. If you've got the 20k MoF required, you can extract the glyph, then put the intricate in and sacrifice the simple with fusion to move to the next quality level, but that's going to be your only way to improve your slotted glyph's pips other than paying a LOT of aurum.
There are 5 secondary stats on glyphs:
Hit rating[/:m]
Critical Rating[/:m]
Critical Power[/:m]
Defence Rating[/:m]
Evade Rating[/:m][/list:u]
Hit rating increases your Glance Reduction. Different bosses have different chances to glance, with the stronger the boss, the more glance reduction you need. A glance will only deal 30% damage, cannot crit, and will not interrupt any ability being cast, (assuming your ability would interrupt if it landed properly).
Critical Rating increases your chance to score a critical hit for extra damage, (hey, I said this was the simple version in the title!).
Critical Power increases the extra damage which a critical hit will deal. We all start off with some critical power, but to make your crits bigger, you'll need Critical Power.
Heals can also critically hit, which makes these important stats for healers.
Defence Rating increases the chance that an enemy's attack on you will glance, only dealing 30% damage. At very high gear levels, the way that Defence Rating converts into glance chance means that it's slightly stronger than evade, but that's really getting down to some serious min maxing there.
Evade Rating increases the chance that you will evade an enemy's attack, taking zero damage from it. This means you can potentially avoid some hits entirely - but it's not your choice what you evade. You might get lucky and evade a big hit, or you might evade a small hit and take a big one in your face.
This makes evade tanks a bit spikier to heal, defence tanks will take more steady damage. Overall, Defence comes out a little bit stronger, but Evade tanks are a totally viable choice.
Tank Glyphing
As I've already brought up Defence & Evade tanking, we'll start with their glyphs.
Tanks need to hit their target, so you will need one hit rating glyph.
Next, you need to choose what type of tank you want to be - Defence, Evade or both. In most circumstances, it's better to max out one stat than to balance the two. There are genuine reasons for this, supported by maths, but given that this is the simple version, just trust me, ok?
If you want to go evade, glyph everything with evade except that one hit rating talisman. If you want to go defence, (shockingly) glyph everything with defence except your hit rating.
If you want to go for both, then it's best to go with 4 defence and 3 evade glyphs.
If you are a tank using a shotgun with the elite ability Kneecapper, then it is best to go for the split option. Kneecapper has a buff to your defence rating which will take you over the soft cap and basically waste some of your buff if you're pure defence. If you're pure evade it'll underperform, so go for the sweetspot in between.
TL:DR
1 x hit rating[/:m]
7 x Defence rating OR Evade rating[/:m][/list:u]
OR if using Shotgun and Kneecapper (or just liking the idea of splitsies)
1 x hit rating[/:m]
4 x Defence rating[/:m]
3 x Evade rating[/:m][/list:u]
DPS Glyphing
As a DPS, your first priority should be hitting your target. That means that once again, you'll need one hit rating glyph. Ultimately, the clever folks have worked out that with fully maxed out glyphs, we'll want to have 5 Critical Rating glyphs and 2 Critical Power glyphs for maximum damage.
While you're levelling up, it's perfectly reasonable to choose to have more Critical Rating glyphs than that, because our chance to crit isn't that high yet, and if you're not critting, then crit power's not actually helping. You can be a bit philosophical here. It basically depends on if you're ok with destroying or extracting a good glyph further down the track once the numbers are adding up a bit better.
TL:DR
1 x hit rating[/:m]
5 x Critical rating[/:m]
2 x Critical Power[/:m][/list:u]
Healer Glyphing
The good news for fist and blood healers is that they don't have to worry about hitting their target - heals on friendly targets cannot glance. That means that fist and blood healers can go with 5 critical rating glyphs and 3 critical power. The critical rating still wants to be nice and high to get those big heals in, hence why you don't want to drop more into power, though some people are doing ok with a 4-4 split.
Assault Rifle users are a bit less fortunate - they need to be hitting to heal, so it's best to have that one hit rating glyph. It's a good trick with healing to have hit rating on your Assault Rifle - that way you can use all the same talismans for fist and blood without having any useless hit rating reducing your stats with those weapons.
TL:DR
5 Critical rating[/:m]
3 Critical Power[/:m][/list:u]
OR for Assault Rifle Healers
1 x hit rating (on the AR, Critical Power on your other weapon)[/:m]
5 x Critical rating[/:m]
2 x Critical Power[/:m][/list:u]
So where should I put my hit rating glyph?
For AR healers, as mentioned above, you want it on your weapon. For DPS and tanks though, it can be a good idea to put it onto a minor talisman, (so a luck, waist or occult talisman). The thinking here is about versatility. For various fights in elite dungeons, there are times when it's a good idea for a DPS to have a bit more hit points than they would in full DPS talismans. That means you'll want a tank talisman which you can swap in and out as needed. You can always have a DPS build specific tanking talisman which has crit rating (or power) on it, but then that talisman will be useless in a tanking setup. If you have hit on a minor talisman - and the same talisman in different sets, then you can swap your DPS hit talisman for a tanking hit talisman when needed. You don't want to suffer the DPS loss of swapping out a major or head talisman, so a minor makes the most sense.
Cost Effective Weapon Glyphing
For DPS and Healers, there is a bit of an added challenge when working out what items to put glyphs onto. The most frequently used glyph is critical rating - you'll want more of them than any other for dps or healing. So for empowering them, and for getting the drops themselves, it's going to be the stat you'll need the most of. If you put critical rating onto your weapons, that will mean than instead of 5 critical rating glyphs to level, you'll have 6 instead (the curse of having 2 weapons!).
That means that purely in terms of spending less and upgrading as fast as you can, it makes sense to put critical power onto your weapons. You'll then end up with needing 5 critical rating and 3/4 critical power instead of 6 critical rating and 2/3 critical power.