POE 2 - What am I missing?

I went and got POE 2, pretty hyped cause I enjoy the first game. I jumped in and made a warrior, as I always play melee builds. I've only played for ~12 hours so far, and there are some things that just seem to be off. First of all, leveling with Mace is just...terrible at low levels. Why is the mace default attack by far my hardest hitting ability? The delay on Earthquake eruption is WAY too long, Rolling Slam has some odd things happening with movement and it's very un-fun to use. Boneshatter is fine, I guess, but it's not fun sitting there watching for a golden orb on my target's forehead before I should use it. I figured I'd hold off judgement until I hit the next couple tiers of abilities, and then I excitedly unlocked Molten Blast (I think that's what it's called). Molten Blast has the strangest movement, even when you have it checked to always attack in place. Why does my character drift pretty far when I use it?

On top of that, the Mace abilities and many of the useful Support gems for them have so many conditionals. D4 taught us that conditionals are not fun, and it's a lesson that dev team had to learn the hard way.

I really want to like the game, but frankly this is the most boring leveling experience I have had in any arpg in recent memory, and I played D4 on release and season 1. So what am I missing? Is there some hidden mechanic to the Mace abilities I'm just not understanding? Am I alone in thinking it's lame and weird that the default mace attack hits SO much harder than anything else, no matter which supports are used? (I'm assuming, and would hope, this is not the case at end-game when I have access to more interesting supports). And yes, before anyone else yells at me, Alkaizer or whatever his name is already said in a stream that players like me are bad, and crybabies, so I'm aware posting this that some folks will not like my criticism.

No shade here, but the simple answer is it's early access, anticipated to last at least 6 months. It's supposed to need improvements. That's your job, to feedback in the appropriate channels.