Advice from pros

Hi everyone, i need some help/advice on how to improve. I am playing duos with a friend and as of now we only managed to beat the first night boss. We both have experience with elden ring, myself a bit more than him, although he played a lot of pvp which I was not interested in.

We have around 32 hours of playtime by now, but we are struggling a lot. We rarely manage to be level 7 or more by the end of the first night, and we have only reached level 12 by the end of the second night a handful of times. He isn't used to playing on a controller so that's a bit of an extra struggle for him, and because of that I am in charge of managing where we go and what we do. Sometimes it is a bit overwhelming for me to do this, and I sometimes I fold under time pressure and having to make decisions.

Currently I am playing revenant and he is playing guardian, trying to beat the darkdrift night (I am doing the remembrance for the revenant). Her HP scaling is abysmal so I often get one or two shot by most bosses, but I am actively getting better at dodging. We did get to the boss multiple times now, and the most we did was to get him at half hp.

We struggle most with optimizing our route and getting that extra xp, but also with reviving each other on the third down, because the purple bar is full and regenerates very fast, usually if one of us gets downed the third time, it is over because we never manage to revive each other without getting downed ourselves. What are some advices you guys have so that we improve?

It is starting to get a bit frustrating since I know some people defeated all the bosses in this time span, and we are taking over 15 hours to be even close to beating this boss.

Thank you!