One of the issues with macros that I've noticed, and why I had to unmacro Provoke in particular, is you can hit the button and the ability can fail to go off, but the macro goes off in chat. This is particularly undesirable with vital skills like Provoke or Raise, and can be very annoying if you spam the party with your macro just to fire the skill.

I would say for the most part macros aren't necessary unless you're in a raiding environment and your party asks you to use one. My Bard asked me to macro Berserk so he knows when to apply Warden's Paean. Our summoner has E4E macro'd so our healers know when it's up and down. And everyone who can raise has a raise macro, though usually they do a verbal confirmation for who's got swiftcast up.