Short answer: if both of the devices support zwave direct association and they are within one hop of each other on your Z wave network (Basically in the same room, or at least within about 20 feet), then, yes, using the minimote to directly associate them should result in very quick communication between those two specific devices.
Longer answer: However, it should also be noted that this change in state will not necessarily be reported to the smartthings hub so the results are not always quite what you expected, particularly with regard to status reports. But it’s a common and quick way to have an aux switch turn on a master switch.
Also, not all switches or other devices support direct association. So you need to check the manufacturer’s description carefully, or look up the Z wave “conformance statement” on the official Z wave alliance site. And it won’t do you any good if any of the devices you want to link up are zigbee or Wi-Fi or another protocol. This is just as a zwave option. (You can “bind” two zigbee devices together for similar result, but not through the Minimote.)
So the first step is to look at the individual devices you want to communicate, and make sure that both support zwave direct association.
BTW, another thing to try when you’re seeing delays like this is a Z wave repair. This is also called healing the network. It sounds complicated, but all it really does is have every device rebuild its table of addresses so it knows where its nearest neighbors are. This can greatly improve the speed with which messages move through the network.
Many people pair every new device right next to the hub. That’s called “bench pairing.” There’s nothing wrong with it, but it does mean that the devices don’t really know who their nearest physical neighbors are. So their local routing tables may have been trying to send messages via a device which is in fact several rooms away.
You fix this by doing a Z wave repair after all the devices are in their permanent locations. Then each knows who its true neighbors are, and it can speed up the whole network.
You can do something similar for the zigbee devices.
So sometimes the problem is that the aux is trying to reach a node which is not a true neighbor, and that’s where the delay is. So just one more thing to try.
The following topic discusses this issue: