Midgame Mace+Shield Advice

Hello, fellow marauders.

I've been levelling my first character - mace+shield marauder - and he's been doing fine till mid-40s. I had done some reading and invested properly into life and armor nodes, so he's not screwed up for late game buildwise yet (I have more than enough quest respec points to remove the few odd nodes), survivability has been good, resists are cruel capped and so on.

However I've encountered two problems at the end of cruel act 2:
* my damage is low despite having a decent weapon (lvl 44 yellow mace with +61% phys);
* I starve on mana.

Ordinary attacks are
* Ground Slam with Added Fire Damage or More Melee Physical (results are pretty same)
* Heavy Strike with Life Gain on Hit
* Infernal Blow with Weapon Elemental Damage
Shield Charge for mobility, Determination for armor, Enduring Cry for charges.

(I have a 2% Life Leech passive (which was probably a waste of passives so early - but I had no idea about Life on Hit back then! ^^ ) and with my armor/block/evasion/regen I have no trouble dealing with packs to link Life on Hit with Ground Slam just yet. However, it still yields extra life on Heavy Strike at hard hitting bosses. That's the reason behind such allocation.)

Usual setup, I think? Is there anything I can do to augment my damage output at this level without getting immediately OOM, which would be a result of using 2 support gems with Ground Slam? (Current mana pool at 400 before Determination, 240 with.) Should I probably add a trap or a totem of sorts to my arsenal? Or should I just suck it up and choke on mana pots till I link 3-4 better gems together later on?

Equipment (some gems are here and there just for the sake of levelling):


Passives:

Get Blood Magic and Resolute Technique. I'm using Mace/Shield just like you and Blood Magic has made managing my spell costs and keeping myself alive so much easier. Resolute technique as well ends up making a noticeable increase in your damage because you're not missing all the time. It also frees up points from all those accuracy nodes. Sure you never get to crit again but if you take the mace damage nodes, get more attack speed and maybe even some elemental damage if you don't care as much about more defenses you'll be pumping out plenty of dps.

Blood Magic was indeed a game changer. Just a couple of refunds to grab Troll's Blood immediately. And while in the trade chat after Blood Magic, I also managed to upgrade my worthless necklace and belt cheaply. All-round major improvements in under 40 minutes. :)

After some testing I stopped with
* Infernal Blow (+Elemental Damage +Blood Magic) for AoE in general and it's still hard hitting on single target - great versatility
* Ground Slam with Life on Hit as an amazing emergency life battery
* And now that I don't attempt to leech with Heavy Strike AND have enough mana (most importantly), I paired HS with Added Fire Damage and Increased Physical for an immensely more powerful HS than I had before

Missing the reach of Ground Slam somewhat (particularly when it comes to fighting casters/archers), and maybe I'll try it again when I get my hands on a 4L piece. But still in the meanwhile I feel as powerful as ever (if not more) once again. Thanks!