So once I started grinding for a sub 34 in any% I noticed that most of the time I was losing up to 10 seconds every attempt on Exor. I've always had the feeling that the attack patterns he could give you had some time difference between them, but this finally got me to investigate his pattern lengths.

Exor has 3 phases, all of them which are divided into two parts; the "attack" and "vulnerable" parts. On each attack part, the game chooses one of three possible attacks (or two, in the case of phase 3) for that phase. They all differ slightly in length, meaning that certain attack combinations will yield faster results than others.

The game pops up a box scrolling from the left side of the screen every time Exor chooses an attack or switches to being vulnerable; I used this as a visual cue to denote when each attack starts and ends.

Let's look into each individual phase's attacks:

Exor Phase 1

1. Lightning
2. Gunk Ball (+0.5s)
3. Flame (+1.93s)

Compared to the later phases, this is a tame spot. Gunk Ball is only .5s slower than Lightning, so getting either of those two attacks will guarantee a fast phase 1. Flame is the most suboptimal attack, losing ~1.5s over Gunk, and nearly 2 seconds over Lightning.

Exor Phase 2

1. Gunk Ball
2. Flame (+2.57s)
3. Lightning (+5.77s)

This phase has the most potential for time loss. Gunk Ball is the fastest of all three attacks in this phase, with Flame being 2.5s slower and Lightning losing over 5s. Getting Lightning in this phase guarantees a slower Exor fight overall even if you get the fastest possible attacks on phases 1 and 3.

Exor Phase 3

1. Flame
2. Gunk Ball (+2.30s)

Surprisingly, unlike the previous two phases, Flame is actually faster than Gunk by about two seconds, which is still a considerable amount of time. While not as much as the time loss potential as phase 2, it can still be the icing on top of the cake depending on what luck you got on the previous two phases.

Finally, let's rank each attack combination from fastest to slowest:

1. Lightning-Gunk-Flame
2. Gunk-Gunk-Flame (+0.50)
3. Flame-Gunk-Flame (+1.93)
4. Lightning-Gunk-Gunk (+2.30)
5. Lightning-Flame-Flame (+2.57)
6. Gunk-Gunk-Gunk (+2.80)
7. Gunk-Flame-Flame (+3.07)
8. Flame-Gunk-Gunk (+4.23)
9. Flame-Flame-Flame (+4.50)
10. Lightning-Flame-Gunk (+4.87)
11. Gunk-Flame-Gunk (+5.37)
12. Lightning-Lightning-Flame (+5.77)
13. Gunk-Lightning-Flame (+6.27)
14. Flame-Flame-Gunk (+6.80)
15. Flame-Lightning-Flame (+7.70)
16. Lightning-Lightning-Gunk (+8.07)
17. Gunk-Lightning-Gunk (+8.57)
18. Flame-Lightning-Gunk (+10.00)

Do note that getting the fastest attacks possible does NOT guarantee a fast Exor, since you will still need optimal bomb throws on each vulnerability part, although they're not quite as significant as the lengths of the actual attacks; for example, something like an LGG or LFF with optimal bomb throws might be faster than an LGF or GGF with suboptimal bomb throws, but something like an FLG cannot be salvated.