RDM has 33 actions (including role skills) at level 70, in comparison to PLD which has 38 or AST with 37, the lowest I think being WHM at 31 actions. As I'm on controller and use the cross hotbar (XHB), I'm comfortable with two hotbars filled up with actions (so 32), but as some jobs take me over that and require a third hotbar so this is what I would call bloat something that takes me over the comfortable limit. Now I can still play even if a certain job has bloat, but some actions could really do with either being removed altogether or merged with something else as apposed to being macro'd.

As for the Verfire x Verthunder example, well they offer differing results so although Stone and Fire might be cheaper to cast, they also give less Mana and have less potency than Aero and Thunder so you may not always go for the processed action when you are trying to balance your Mana or dealing damage. In PvP though what you want actually happens and the actions switch automatically when it processes, but Stone and Fire upgrade to Aero and Thunder with the last two doing more damage but have the same Mana gain as the previous two, also neither of the four have any MP costs so there is less management involved in this case to begin with. Unfortunately it was confirmed the PvP style actions are not coming to PvE, apparently so the latter requires more skill to do content or something like that.

Macros are still too unreliable though, a little information below which can be found online from the game's Wiki.

"Macros are incompatible with skill queuing. When you press the button for a skill normally on your hotbar, it hands that to the game's system to execute right after the current skill completes. With a macro, however, it just dumps those text commands into your chat box right when you press the button/Key. This means that even if you're 100% efficient about pressing the buttons/keys at the right time to have it execute the skill with minimal delay, there will still be more delay than if you had queued up the skill. In practice, it's usually a lot more than just a little tiny delay, and over a long fight this downtime where you're doing nothing can really add up.

The other reason is lag. When you execute a macro, it sends all those text commands in rapid succession to the game. Sometimes, though, one of them won't be able to execute, which can cause problems."