So I've been debating whether to play live drums on future beats I make or continue programming in the piano roll. Would human velocity on beats take away from a track or enhance it? What do you think?

Yes.

When you mean live, you mean banging them on a pad controller?

hell yeah human velocity enhances beats. so much. would definitely encourage you do it . even if you are a lil sloppy you can move around MIDI notes later of quantize to a percentage.

Yeah I have a roland td-4 ekit so I would just use it as a midi controller and trigger samples. Thanks for feedback

hell yea. you should check out some of hudson mohawke's stuff, or mike slott.. i dont know for sure but it sounds like some of their stuff is live beats or live beat pads, gives a real human feel to electronic, kinda takes it to a different level as far as im concerned. and thats great... cuz alot of it's mostly 4/4, but it's more human, and sliiightly-unquantized, and you can tell when you hear it, it's electronic but it's as far away from the rigidity of.. say.. techno, as you can get, while still being mostly electronic.

definitely man, as a drummer, i can always sympathize and appreciate live drumming over electronic programming

I'm decided on getting an alesis control pad, it's like $100 bucks and I can use it either with ableton or my drum machine
even if I don't finish a tune it's going to be great just to jam out

I would recommend a level of both. Each has their own sound and drawbacks as well as manually putting them in. I use many mixtures of both at any given time and sometimes I even just bang one out on my laptop keyboard if I'm feeling a certain melody at any given time.