Whenever Cao Ren first appeared on the scene he had an awesome buckler/blade combination that sent out balls of fire and was one of my favorites. For whatever reason, possibly because it was too awesome to contain, they scratched it.
In Dynasty Warriors 6, Gan Ning had some pretty epic daggers. Honestly, he's one of my least favorite characters and I found myself playing as him because the attack set was so awesome. (Note: The only reason I don't like him was because of how they presented him in DW4...or 5...whichever one they presented him as the 'bad boy' of Wu.)
Diao Chan originally had twin maces that were kinda cool. Of course it would probably be about the same rotation as the twin axes. Still. I'd rather see someone using twin maces than a harp, paint brush, or pool cue...I mean really. A paint brush?
Are there any other weapons I'm not thinking of that they needed to bring back? I'm glad they added Zhang Fei's Double Pike and Guan Yu's Curved Blade. They really did a fair amount with 7:XL to bring in new weapons. Even though the whole title system negates the use of practically all the power weapons during Nightmare battles as it's almost a requirement to use a speed weapon and drain health.