How important are macros?

[VKhaun]

It slows you down. It definitely slows you down, and this has nothing to do with the limitations of integer waits (because integer waits are obviously a drop in efficiency, so we don't need to argue about them)

Thanks. That picture makes sense.

At first I was thinking the last pic showed a delay between pressing buttons and you should just press it faster, but I tested before replying and as I add more and more junk to the same button the game seems to require some amount of time per line to check the list. Simply spamming it won't force them to fire off ASAP.

It doesn't get nearly as bad as you describe though. Once I've got everything on cooldown there's not enough there to constantly be slowing me down. I get into a groove of 1on-1off as things come off cooldown at different times and the macros flow with the global cooldown again. Definitely wrecking my opening vs bosses though. I will need to make changes.

[AmeliaVerves]

I will need to make changes.

Learn your rotations, your skills and throw away those macros. No more changes needed than this.

[seekified]

Once I've got everything on cooldown there's not enough there to constantly be slowing me down.

When using macros, the game doesn't actually start even registering your button presses until the previous skill's GCD is finished, so in all situations you're losing a split second per skill simply because the next skill isn't being "pre-loaded" in the skill queue. That's just how it is, and like Rongway says, that split second per skill builds up very fast over time to become quite significant.

Even if you put every skill of a completely perfect DRG rotation in entirely separate macro buttons (just one skill per macro), the very fact that they'd be macros instead of regular weaponskills would mean that maintaining that rotation would quickly become impossible because you're constantly falling behind on every single button press. That alone should be reason enough not to do this at all - the fact that macros with multiple skills in them are unreliable and unpredictable only compounds the issue further.