Buy gear from the Bazaar. Check every 5 levels up until 56 and there's always gear available. After 56, crafted gear and dungeon dropped gear become the best available.
Pets can help. The extra boost a pet can give to resist is not great, but the total extra capability a good pet can give you is considerable. Unfortunately, most randomly dropped pets in the game aren't very helpful. You can get better pets by spending crowns, but I don't really recommend that. The best pets are those that knowledgeable long term players have carefully bred through many generations of crossbreeding. Some of those players are willing to share their work with you by breeding their awesome pets with one of yours.