Weapon skills need to die

My warrior is leveling nicely and I'm having a reasonable amount of fun with it. By reasonable, I mean that the grind is not too painful, but the Warrior class definitely doesn't have any of the various "oomphes" that other classes have when they level (Rogue: "I ripped this clothie mob in 5 seconds", Mage: "Look how I take down 80% of this mob's health before it can even reach me", Lock: "Watch me solo an elite 4 levels above me", etc...).

No such achievement for a warrior: you just charge, whack whack whack, see the mob's health drop slowly and marvel at the occasional crit, and then do it again. I suspect leveling a paladin is equally non-eventful.

I leveled Arms until 41 with the Warrior quest weapon (very nice) and I then respecced Fury and I am currently double wielding two blue weapons and waiting until level 51 where the AV reward should grant me another uberleetwtfbbq two-hander.

A blue axe dropped for me in ZF last night. "Sweet", I thought when I saw it, "Nice axe! Oh... no... an axe".

I have nothing against axes in particular, it's just that at 47, I never used one yet, so my axe skill is at 0. Which means, it's time for the stupid weapon skill up dance.

So here I go, picking on the lowest level mobs possible (still around 45 where I am currently grinding), pop on Defensive Stance with a shield (have to last as long as possible), auto-swing the axe, occasionally use an ability that might prolong the fight (Demoralizing Shout or similar), and when my health has dropped significantly, Piercing Howl and run like a little girl. Bandage. Repeat.

Yawn.

Weapon skilling up is this thing that you either never notice (typically when you just leveled and your cap is now 5 higher, but the increase in miss rate is hardly noticeable until you cap it again) or just a mind-numbing process that can be done while browsing the web. I wish Blizzard would remove it altogether, I can't see any point in this drudgery any more, especially since they keep adding new stats that are more interesting to analyze and work on (weapon expertise comes to mind).

Or is there something I'm missing?