Well I was comparing the damage output of a knight/monk/thief and I wasn't taking recovery time into account. So what I want to count is the recovery time between melee attacks and magic spells. I'm not sure how to do this 
Can you explain your way of testing there? What I think you were describing is casting a spell that has a long duration then when the character was able to make another action entering turn based mode and checking the time difference?
If this was discussed before I would love to read the thread.