macros: bad for DPS?

[Gardes]

Absolutely. Just using macro itself is bad. Mostly because macros can't be queued. Look at your non macro spell and press it. Then as its gcd finishes rotating, press it again before the gcd clock hits 12 (between 9 and 12). Your character will immediately cast the next spell after casting your first one. That's called skill/spell queuing and macro will not be able to do that. Try and see for yourself. Make a spell macro without anything but 1 spell it in it and the /micon and test it.

Imagine [----] is a cast time and ___ is the time for the server to receive your commands after you send it. With spell queuing, it would be something like
[---][---]

With macros, it would be something like
[---]__[---]
because you will have to wait for your first spell to finish before sending out a command that the server will accept and the command will have to travel from your pc to the server in between spells instead before the previous one finishes and it's hugely dependent on your latency to the server. Over time, you will cast less spells than an non macro user and end up with lower dps. I'm not even sure if the /wait is done client side or server side. If it's client side, it's even worse because it'll have the same problems I mentioned above plus the rounded up numbers on /wait. I still use macros but I have cut down on them a lot on my dps classes.