Originally Posted by
Byrthnoth
This also explains why people initially had difficulty explaining the timing of the first DoT Tick for helices. Because it's tied to a global timer, it's not tied to the time you cast the spell. You can get Etudes and Helices that have their first DoT/down-stat tock almost immediately, or you can get ones that almost go a full 10 seconds until the first tock, or really any option in between. It is possible ticks also work this way, but at 3 seconds it would be kind of hard to see.