Well. Let's think about which ones have cool and unique animations: Earth Render, Arrow Helix, Iron Tempest...

And then I know Axe has two WS types. There's the Upward Swing, and the Over Head Smash. the standard upward swing works for slashing skills, while the overhead smash is truer for blunt skills. It is true they could do something fancier. than reusing a lot of those.

Most of the spells don't bother me a lot. Protect and Shell: Awesome job. Stoneskin... It's OK... it's more like a wall than skin. The animation for when you get hit with it on is far better. And then there's the attack spells. Fire, Water, Thunder, and Aero seem Alright to me. Blizzard is a little to plain, it's just a frost cloud. But the only attack spell I find really unacceptable is Stone. It's like a glowy hard to see pebble is shot into the monster, followed by a poof of a dust cloud, and even that's hard to notice. It's just to plain.

For Stone, the old XI rising rocks animation was always cool. And for Blizzard, it'd be awesome if it was just adjusted to at the end, you had the cloud consolidate, and make a spikey ice crystal.