i was 160 and i had 127 level 7 cards and you can assume i had all the level 8 cards (i think 120) and i got to where i was without too much unnecessary grind. i grinded 2 hours tops for 178-180 mainly farming for a ring recipe.
I mainly only used cards until i unlocked the next area of quests, did them until i needed more exp for the next area, used more cards, then idecided to jump somewhere from like 170-177 to get to rank 6, then i did it again and got to 180 and so on until 190. the 190 dungeon gives a ton of exp, 2 runs got me 4 levels, another 2 runs got me to 196, and the last 2 got me to 199 roughly. I still had 20 lv 9 cards remaining.