No man, you're speaking of nonsense. The change in the animation didn't bring any problem in the sp gain since was almost random.
Do you remember the gladiators having shield skill almost null, because they were forced to attack to exp (and for a way less amount of others DoW, since their attack are weak) ? How this is qualified as a problem on attack speed ?
Do you remember the healing race ? The first healing getting huge exp, and the second..nothing ? This too isn't related to animation speed.
And for the DDs, was a race to do more skills you can before the mob die, with good pace of strategy