This is an interesting idea, so is the base of the cutting submerged in the inch of water or above it?
If you picture a standard propagator , without the lid, the stem itself is just sat in wet perlite because perlite wicks the water up, so yeah it's kind of sat in water but there's also lots of air too.
This is how I've cloned for a long time, with 99% success rate, never get any wilting, never mist anything, no dome..
Takes longer but often my clones are sat there a month until I'm ready to pot them into coco. I've had some sat there , like in stasis, for two month before . When I need them they are a solid block of root ready to explode into growth phase once potted up.
Then all I do is pour water into the cell from the top and lift the clone out , it kind of floats out with no stress, leave the perlite on and straight into coco.
Another thing I should of mentioned with your situation, how intense is the light and air temp?
Because that could be a major factor since your root zone isn't established enough to take strong light or higher temps, or essentially anything that requires high level drinking and transpiration.