Quote Originally Posted by Sibyll View Post
Not sure if this is still an issue, but for a while I had a macro with Heavy Swing and Tomahawk macro'd so that I'd use Tomahawk if I wasn't in melee range for Heavy Swing. Problem was that often items I'd be in melee range but it'd cast Tomahawk. Needless to say this would screw up both my rotation and eat my TP.

It's personal preference, but I'd rather have a bunch of hot bars for all the abilities than have a few black box buttons, unless you have two skills that you would never use independent of one another that are off the GCD. Even if you use off GCD abilities I've noticed you can get a little lag on your GCD if you use it too late in the cooldown, but it's only something like half a second.
I recall this being an issue 2 or 4 patches ago. I don't notice it now.

FWIW, since gamepad users only have 8 pallettes at any one time, Macroed abilities save a ton of space and hotbar switching.

Lastly I see that an unmacroed ability seems to "click" faster, but the action is cued at the same rate regardless. With this in mind, you could shave a few fractions of a second off the time it takes between when a skill is ready and when you cue it by "pre-cueing" it with a non-macroed action. Not worth the inconvenience IMO. I like my DMG/Recovery macros too much.