It started after Waking Flame update. Animations for sheathe/unsheathe weapons now take very long... It's extremely annoying, like a slow motion.
When starting combat, you have to wait approximately a second so that your character has to perform animation of preparing their weapons, and only then the character can cast skills/other abilities. In IC during the event, it made for extremely unpleasant experience, when I was unable to defend myself during that very long second.
Before using Blade of Woe, you have to wait a second so that your character prepares their weapons as well.
Hopefully, this is not intended and will be fixed.