"Play as the Icon" (Spellweaving) is killing me

These icons have such a random assortment of weird cards, almost none of them useful of the few that I can decipher (on the fly, mid-combat, which is the only time the cards appear).

I'm trying to fight a Storm monkey, Marquis Mark II, for the Myth weaving quest and I keep pulling bizarre "echo" and "gambit" cards that don't do anything useful unless the enemy has a weakness effect (I don't get any) or a damage-over-time (I'm not a fire wizard!). Meanwhile, he's just alternating between blades and storm attacks, effortlessly whittling my health down to zero (of COURSE there are no Storm shields or heals, why would you ask?).

Team-Up hasn't produced anything but very long waits for no takers, day after day. Log in, wait about 15-20 minutes in team-up, log out. Heck, that's why I gave up playing my higher-level wizards upon reaching Azteca--endless sitting around in Team-Up for all the boss battles. It's VERY frustrating. Has anyone dealt with this and found a workaround?