1: Yeah that's what it works out to, though due to timing wierdness you will occasionally (read: almost always) end up losing a tic for DoT/HoT effect. Your DoT/HoT will land midway between tics and wear just before its final tic is applied. I don't believe this has been fixed yet.

2: you can probably even stay full int even in endgame, unless your going to go dedicated sch at which point cleric's stance will do the respec for you.

3: yeah, it's fairly useless other than leveling, if you (while in the HUD adjustment screen) click on it and press ctrl+home it will cycle through 3 sizes, you can make it tiny and shove it in a corner so you can still see the timer but it's not obtrusive. the ctrl+home thing works for all(most?) HUD elements too if you weren't already hip to that.

Edit: Yeah I said, "Hip to that" lol can't believe I used that ever anywhere.