Heavy Armor Melee

As I've mentioned before in some of my other threads, I've been doing my Saris Biped as a Warrior/Cleric.

When I have Cleric as my main, I can go on all day, and never get killed due to the ridiculous amounts of heals that a Cleric gets, and the fact that they wear heavy armor, and use the largest shields.

The only thing, though, is it is starting to take awhile to kill things. Back when I had 100 BLK at Lv30-ish cleric, it wasn't so bad. With that much strength, I was always doing as much damage as possible with each swing of the mace. But now that my Cleric is in the 50s, and I'm trying to keep my warrior about the same level (so I don't have to have 2 different sets of armor in my vault), it starting to get slow for my tastes.

Armor is pretty bulky -- I'm trying to avoid having two different sets (one for warrior and one for cleric), so I will level 1 school to x1 (41, 51, 61 etc) and then level the other school and then replace the armor when they can both use it, and I do the same for weapons at the x5 and x0 levels.

The only thing, as I mentioned, it is getting slow. I had an easy route from 40 to 55 (I kinda cheated and used my dragon to pile on the XP), but now that my dragon is out-leveling the fire opals and my biped isn't getting much per kill due to my dragon being 98, that isn't going quite as well as it was.

I thought I'd take my dragon out to get trophies, but... see my "spawn nerfs" rant thread. That didn't go so well as there weren't enough mobs around to get any reliable number of trophies.

As it stands, I have these levels:

WAR: 55 + 75% (shooting for 56 for new trophy tier)
CLRC: 51
MAGE: 4
SCT: 4

My crafts:

MIN: ~85 (forget the exact level)
BLK: 100
SCH: 100
JWL: 40s (forget the exact level)
TNK: 32-ish
ALCH: 50-ish
OUT: 55-ish
Armorer: 60-ish

I'm trying to figure out how to make kills a bit faster/easier. I have a fine steel mace currently, I believe it has Strength and Weapon Socket on it (no crystal though, I can only find Lv20-30 crystals, and Lv60+ ... nothing ever wants to drop a weapon crystal in the 40s or 50s).

Should I try 2-handed weapons? Warrior and Cleric both have 2-hand crush if I recall, would that do more damage? I wouldn't be able to block with my shield, but with the sheer number of heals, surely I could still survive?

Should I try stopping on this and taking another adventure school instead? I hear everyone talking about the "nature route" with shaman, druid, etc... but I wanted a heavy armor melee character. I've also heard talk about reavers and such.

First and foremost, though, I am shooting for access to Gift IV spells ASAP. I've been putting 1 point per level in Augmentation so that I get it at Lv60, and I'm so close to getting there, but the levels are coming to a grinding (heh.. pun) halt.

Also, I've been noticing that Warriors, despite their heavy armor, don't seem to have all that much survival. Monsters a good 5 levels below my rating are making it tough on me (I can't take on more than one mob safely either) due to the fact I only have 2 heals isn't helping me any either...

Suggestions/etc appreciated!