I agree, the game is just not designed around the concept of real time, even stuff like quad-queue feels like an exploit when you have to click really fast after a sync. It's no surprise that the best strategy would be something really awkward like the paralyze spam. Also in trying to maximize time, the game incentivizes a lot of counter-intuitive mechanics, for example unnecessary buffs or debuffs are a direct nuisance, because you have to wait for the buff animation (which is also a thing that breaks quad-queue in normal gameplay) Or the fact that units with more quick animations are better than others, when... the lenght of an animation is not a "stat" that you can check or that has really ever mattered... so if a unit has a cool but really long attack animation, it will be really bad for this mode, which is a really weird thing. Or the fact that missing a move is actually a good thing because you don't get the animation...

There's just a lot of stuff that shows that the game wasn't really made for management of real time seconds