With every source of each stat being additive, the most significant increase in power comes from leveling up. But now with the transcendence update, the power fantasy is never realized because you're always rushing to ascend and start at level 0 again.

Transcendence bonus is multiplicative.

Now that I've experienced the first transcendence too, I can say that it took me under a day to get back to A30 so it's pretty fast, I don't have the feeling that I have to re-grind everything all over again.

But with the current mechanics, I don't think there's any chance for us to get to the higher T levels just yet. It took me 1 day to get from A0-A30  again and it's gonna take another day to get from A30 to A33, with the later levels being even further apart. I don't think I'll be able to get to T2 anytime soon (meaning A60). The gold/xp diff is just too high right now (and I'm pretty far ahead in the corrupted nexus + talisman, I have at least elites for all the pets + min 60 corruption on all of them, etc.). 

But overall I think the transcendence coupled with auto-ascension is a good system to have!

scratch that, maybe it's actually not that bad. I've reached A37-38 since my last post (12 hours). 

I jumped the gun too quickly, it seems to be pretty balanced considering the world tier too.

Have no fear, transcend away!