His timer was always ridiculously long to be perfectly honest. Though you're right in that you really have to keep an eye on it now. It's likely more in line with how it was intended. Honestly, asides from making him less glitchy who didn't expect him to get hit hard with a nerf bat?
It just kinda came without warning or discussion. The only talked about change, and confirmed here on the forums, was fixing the bug regarding his character card.
TBH, the UI change is was really threw me off. The old one was easier to pay attention to since it was a large bar right above his Raider status, easy to read, easy to see it go from green to red. I blew up when I was trying to figure out the new meter, in addition to having very little time to study it, while i'm in the middle of trying to flatten some Hades grunts.
And none of this is in the patch notes