Alright, Where to start.

Real quick.
i am a sword, hammer, and needle user, so my complaints come from this play style alone currently.

First and foremost:
Theirs a limit to how annoying, expensive, time consuming and demanding, leveling a sprite should be.
Enough is enough Cap the little buggers at 50 and call it a day. Nobody in their right mind is going to spend the time and money to
level their sprite to the current cap.

Here is why:

The average 5* run, from my experience offers 5-30+ of any particularmineral. When i say mineral i mean the big crystals that have been in the game for so long,

To level my Maskeraith, i easily chewed through a thousand dark minerals, just to get to level 70. Not even 5 star.
Not to mention the specific materials i need for the Specific FOOD it requires to eat. Just saying you guys said MATERIALS to level, not crafted, costly, time consuming and did I mention costly? food that they have to eat.

Realistically, for the players that wish to cap their new pets, lets say were looking at roughly..... ooooooh...... 200 or so runs through tier 5, (yes i know 1000/50<--- the maxish shard count for a tiered run, =20) but consider the fact your not going to get the color minerals you need each run, nor are you going to get the max on every level.

Thats a little bit over the top for a pet that doesn't even have a weak AUTO attack.

Dont forget the fact you have to CRAFT THESE, so quickly add Crowns to the list of things you'll need when getting a battle sprite.

Were talking another few months of dungeoning (This is without an elevator pass) to gather the CR and buy the materials, then gather more CR.

Also consider the fact ive been using the max feed things for every level, imagine the minerals/ regular materials needed just to level without those, and we quickly have a whole new mini game in spiral knights. An annoying, money costing, item consuming and time consuming mini game, which doesn't offer a whole lot to new or veteran players, except a neat little pet.

And itll take Months, MONTHS, to level these guys decently. more so for the newer players.

Now lets talk about the sprites themselves,

I love:

The bonuses, And im hoping to see some good stuff once i cap my maskeraith,
But i can only imagine what level is needed for any Max stats.

The attacks are semi useful but should target an enemy, rather than shoot the direction your facing.
Add a lock on function or something for the sprite.
These guys need to be a help to our arsenal rather then a problem. I can see the world chat already blowing up with how annoying the aiming system is.

Problems:

The cool downs are just ridiculous, Stick to say 10 seconds for the first attack and 30 for the second big one, If you go with solid numbers and digits of 5 it looks cleaner. Noticeably the timer counts down immediately, which is good it doesn't add on the other second that many other games have.

As ive said before, it lacks in an auto attack, i blew through most of the dungeon i ran without NEEDING or WANTING to use the new attacks. Ontop of the shield bash and dash, its annoying when you add in the above attacks at least in difficult situations. Otherwise its just shooting fish in a barrel.

Solutions:

Alright here is something that will stop a lot of complaints and issues.

First, make minerals trade-able, Dont think about it, they've been int he game for years, and most people just let them sit their in the inventory.

Second, Either remove the need to feed pets specific foods to level, or cut the cost to make these items to one fourth, im also talking about the items required to craft these too. Were crafting ITEMS, not ARMOR, no need for the cost to be so high.

Third, some kind of an auto attack, make it different for each sprite, but something to lessen the need for more buttons, Id even set the first attack to auto and just keep the timer at twenty seconds.

Ill edit this more as i go, hope this is useful to you guys.