HIVE

They have a bone structure but often its split into multiple pieces. For example, a unit holding a weapon often does not parent the weapon to the unit's hand and insteas gives it translation/rotation that are computer generated to make it move with the hand. That way, when the weapon is dropped on death, the bone simply stops translating and rotating to match the position of the hand. That way it skips doing the WC3 classic concept where there would be a parented copy of it and an unparented copy and the unparented copy would appear during death.

Unfortunately, all this means that if you try to recycle animations with a slightly different character body, the weapon quickly becomes an issue and floats out of place.

oh a weapon is not a problem.. (but i can see the hassle) i was given a reforged crypt fiend model that is literally every single bone for itself with no discernible skeleton structure; compared to the old war3 crypt fiend, this is exploded, incoherent, unfixable.. vexing..

You sure it was the ingame reforged crypt fiend and not a third party asset? I suppose I have not specifically checked the crypt fiend, but the vast majority of reforged assets have about 2 or 3 skeletal roots and do use a skeletal hierarchy for their rig, albeit with Pelvis and Chest often not having a common root bone between them (as opposed to classic Wc3 models which often had one root for the whole model)