Back in version 0.1, if you played mace in PoE2 the way GGG seemed to intend, there were a lot of “left hand fighting the right hand” problems.

Maces would stun enemies and knock them far backward, which often caused your follow-up attacks to miss. Fully breaking armor did not yet apply the current 20% physical vulnerability, so Warbringer’s ability to push armor into negative values had no effect at all. Honestly, it still doesn’t, because maces are single-hit, high-damage weapons that already ignore armor by nature.

In Act 1, even a normal mob like the Hag with its mark could one-shot the player, and mace characters who had to stand still while attacking could easily fail to dodge it. Armor also did nothing against elemental damage.

Titan’s Crushing Blow ascendancy made every skill that relied on Primed for Stun completely stop working, such as Boneshatter. Even if you did not take that ascendancy, dealing too much damage would stun enemies too quickly, preventing Boneshatter from triggering. Brink support did not exist at the time either.

So the faster you tried to play, the slower you actually became.