in my opinion...
1. try to do Strong approaching and upgrade your battle armor as much as possible. Do eight gates rune too. they help with the team you're currently using. next, if you have a set team that works with everything (like pvp, sage, and plot instances), try investing on those characters' moods. they really do help.
2. as for refining, since you did mention you lacked in speed, you could invest on those.
but overall, although power and level do contribute a lot in beating others, try countering with build.
in my server, there was a lvl 73 with lower power, and he beat a lvl 77 with higher power (build with mei, water main, ao, and *forgot the last character) –– which was someone who was top 8 power.