What's the cooldown on Aurelion Sol's stars?

Now, I know what you're thinking. "There's no cooldown, it's his passive, it's always turned on," etc. That's not the thought I want to bring up. No, what I'm asking is this.

How does the game separate the ticks of damage from his individual stars?

Because, as I'm playing around with epic space dragon, there's one thing that hurts more than anything else: Walking counter-clockwise.

If you end up stuck walking counter-clockwise, you can end up having the same star touching a target for 3-4 seconds, and it only gets to deal one tick of damage for that whole time. I understand that he's built so that he should be going the other way to deal optimal damage, but should he be punished this harshly if the situation calls for the exact opposite?