You probably should go with a state based variable system.
For some ideas on how to do this, you can look at the hybrid system I used in my old hellsmash mod, the source for which you can find here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_YmWn ... w5HaGgjbivLook around in drsdefs.qc, player.qc, and probably client.qc for weapon animation stuff.
Glancing around in that source code brings back memories, and is...well...kinda embarassing.

There's still some good stuff in there waiting to be dusted off and polished up though.
I was planning on doing an updated / enhanced version of this for inclusion in my new Frikbot X enhancements / GPL QC Codebase, but real-life and hardware upgrades somehow ate up 1 1/2 years, so I haven't gotten around to it yet.
My Quake2QC project will however, require it due to the absurd amount of animations models have in that game.
Guess I should probably put tackling FBX 11 first and get that released... So many things I had planned to do, then forgot about due to lack of time.
