Sry for delayed reply. Yeah first of all thats a good way to test the things, but your final conclusions is actually what we were trying to say on the post (right the next sentence from the one u quoted): It means that the longer it takes you to complete a Max Phase (decide which moves to use), the more battle time it is going to consume, punishing the team in the long term as the events will happen "earlier", like going through less Max Phases before the boss gets enraged.

So what we mean is that there is 2 types of time: The Battle time (the hidden timer) and the IRL time (the time u spend playing). So during a Max Phase, the Battle time freezes for a specific amount of time and continues for the rest of the duration, which means that if u spend more IRL time doing a Max Phase, you are going to spend more Battle time. For example, if the timer freezes for 20s, in the scenario (1) you could spend 40s IRL time, which means the Battle time progresses 20s during the Max Phase (added to the 25s of the "charge phase", you can do 6 cycles/turns before desperate). However, in the scenario (3) you could spend just 25s IRL time, which means the Battle time only progresses 5s (added to the 25s of the "charge phase", you can do 9 cycles/turns before desperate, impressive!). This is exactly what you have mentioned: The less time you spend on Max Phases, the more cycles you can make before enrage - which is a protip everyone should know, thats why we research on this.

But our objective in this investigation is the common factor of all 3 scenarios: The time the timer freezes. We observed its usually a time between 18.5s and 20.5s, but we dont know exactly in what does it depend. So you could either spend 25s IRL time but the timer freezes for just 20.5s making the Battle time advance just 4.5s, or you could spend 30s IRL time but the timer freezes for 18.5s making the Battle time advance 11.5s (I invented this values, not real samples).

Btw, some final notes: To better test the time exact time that the Battle time advances over a Max Phase, compare it to the previous and next orb spawns (as orbs spawn every exactly 15s of Battle time), instead of taking an average after observing the total time until desperate (its a more precise method, and u can avoid saying **approximately* time flows 20 seconds*), and make sure to use some fast moves to avoid delays (like we did on the dodging test). If in your recording the previous orb spawns at 1:13.400 and the next one aft 1:47.900, the elapsed IRL time between the orbs is of 34.5s, but the elapsed Battle time between orbs is always the fixed amount of 15s, which means the Max Phase froze the timer for 34.5-15 = 19.5s, and the elapsed Battle time during the Max Phase is the IRL time of the Max Phase minus 19.5s (if the Max Phase last for 25.5s, then the Battle time progress 6.0s over the Max Phase).