/em yawn.
This is standard between all sets which use a weapon to avoid clipping issues, if they were to do it for axes they'd have to do it for every weapon which would take hours of manpower.
aw that sux, how bout including the draw axe animation with the axe powers activation then?, maybe thats dumb, donno its 6am here =)
Thats weapon sets used to work (or at least was supposed to work). This lead to an enforced pause between attacks if you started with your weapon drawn, wich people complained about. So BAB has been working through the weapon sets and removing the pause, which means that drawing your weapon will slow your attack chain a little. More people prefer it that way. The trick is to chain together your weapon powers as much as possible.
As for the man-hours required to add alternative animations to all powerset cmbinations so you could activate them without redrawing a weapon, you are talking months or years, not hours.
They have done it for shields, with a limited combination of other powers, that has taken BAB about a year.
I really should do something about this signature.
currently playing an axe/fire brute, and i love it, apart from one thing that seems unessesary, and is annoying too me.
every time i use a power that isnt from the primary axe set, i loose the axe out of my hands wich means i have to go throgh the "draw axe" animation almost more times than i accually attack in most encounters, most other primarys do not have this far as i know. if this was a planned addition to the axe primary i cant say other than huh. in my opinion, most other power animation would look normal with the axe still in hand and would make more sence keeping it handy at all times (maybe put in a put-away axe animation after certain time beeing afk or not using a power,like say 1m). If there is the time part of the whole id really love a better implemention as for example, calculating the draw axe animantion time over the strategy of the primary, and spread it out amongst the powers, say the axe draw animation is 1sek(not sure exactly how long it is) spread that out amonst the activation time of the axe primarys. IMHO would make for a much sleeker primary. thogh im guessing this is probobly worst for a fire armor as we would use the self heal, burn power quite often, whilst alot of other armor powersets dont have many or any activation powers that are used often. anyway i really hope you take out the draw axe animation (execept for the first time u accually draw it ofcourse). cheers on a great game that keeps evolving!.