It ' s not as simple as that , because it ' s not really a case of when it applies but rather the server being notified of the change . If anything SE may need to put a hard cap on skill speed or replace skill speed with a secondary effect once you reach the cap . The example is pretty much . Say SE is updating the character data every 2 seconds to notify the servers what is up with the character , the location , the skills used etc . Now when you go below that 2 seconds it ' s able to take in the data for the dmg dealt but as soon as it attempts to apply the buffs you may receive or give it ' s already receiving conflicting data of the latest action you ' ve taken causing them to prioritize the latest action over the last action . Because of this you can ' t simply change when the effect takes place because it doesn ' t change anything in terms of notifying the server of the changes because going below 2 second or what they had is just to fast for the server to react to .