...So you say Maya isn't good? Maya is kicking the ass of 3dsmax. Maya FTW! You need tons of plugins for 3dsmax to compare it to Maya, Maya is the best stand-alone around here. Maya is more flexible for animating than 3dsmax, but 3dsmax creators have the rights for the Maya program now, so they'll keep ruining it until they... completely destroy it.
I looked around like a year ago on this question, MAYA or 3DSMAX, and pretty much 95% of professional modelers say Maya's better. But, since Warcraft 3 models were made in 3DSMAX, if you only want to make Warcraft 3 models, stick to 3ds. Otherwise, download Maya free trial and try it. It's 2 times cheaper btw.
But, bottom line, If you ask me, the best program(s) For animating and modeling would be Zbrush (modeling best program) combined with Maya (animating best program)...
I've been using both programs for a while, first 3dsMax, then Maya... 3dsMax wasn't flexible for me, the UI for me was complicated, while Maya seemed simple to use.