I just completed another run. I've yet to explore the meta-progression system, but I had more thoughts on the gameplay.
First off, I love the cooldown bars. Very appreciated. Controller support is handled perfectly, becoming my preferred input method.
I don't know if the in-game font scaling or padding has been changed or if I just got used to it with more time, but I don't find myself confused with my previous "2.2 vs. 22" problem now.
I'd recommend adjusting the health/dmg numbers by a magnitude of 10. Not only do larger numbers feel better when you're dropping damage on bad guys, but I found the idea of gaining 11.2 health, for example, to be rather unintuitive. If that were scaled differently and my healing was going from 100 to 112, it would make more sense and feel more impactful.
Cooldown reduction abilities resetting the cooldown timer of the ability was a feels-bad moment. I wondered if it was resetting or adjusting for the change in time scaling. Then I watched my heal be so close to popping that I had no visible green in the cooldown bar fully reset when I took a cooldown reduction on level up. Perhaps you can calculate the time since last triggering that ability and compare it to the newly modified casting time for the ability and trigger it on selecting a cooldown reduction augment for an ability if appropriate.
Cooldown reduction abilities also need consistent phrasing. Bahamut's being "Reduces Bahamut's summon time" is flavorful, and I like that one, but then others say "recast time" or "cooldown reduction" interchangeably. Wand and Sword say, "Increase [ability] attack speed." I was unsure if that meant cooldown or projectile speed. I noticed the name of those ability choices was "[Ability] Haste," which led me to believe it was cooldown based on that name used for other cooldown abilities, but the description itself was confusing.
There was also some inconsistent and confusing wording on some ability selections. Some might say, "Increase damage by 5%," whereas others would say, "Increases damage by 5%". The former sounds like I'm telling the game what to do, whereas the latter sounds like a more descriptive tone where the game tells me what happens. I have no preference either way, but they read as two different perspectives to me, and consistency between them would be nice.
I want some options at level-up that aren't strictly weapon upgrades. Things like movement speed (I did see that this was in the meta-progression as well, but having some in-run would be cool) or damage reduction thrown in once in a while to break up the flow of just continuing to improve my same suite of weapons would be nice.
Lastly, it would be great if a newly-granted ability triggered immediately upon choosing it for the first time. Immediately showing the player the cool new ability they got gets them instant feedback on their decision. Taser was the last ability I chose in my run, and while it does not have a long cooldown, that was the point where I noticed that I was going to have to wait to see what it did.
There's been some awesome progress since the last time I played, and I'm looking forward to getting more into the meta-progression system.