Something I never quite understood...

i thought the 'balance' was that for levels <120, you have a great chance of doing a slash or swing rather than stab? since there are two slash animations but only one stab animation, that puts axes in the advantage that 66% of the time, they have a chance of dishing out bigger numbers.

In theory, but they didn't make slashes proportionally stronger like stabs are weaker.

4.8 slash vs. 4.6 slash
3.4 stab vs. 4.6 stab

You have a 60% chance to do 0.2*str*atk/100(*mastery*0.9 min) more damage, and a 40% chance to do 1.2*str*atk/100 less damage. That doesn't work out to a positive amount.