you may give a shot for a Veil king crafted shield on switch gear too , he's quite strong . all you need to do is keep him alive/resummon him when his HP goes low in order to avoid the rape when he becomes hostile
i haven't tested any assassins in the 1.3 patch yet , so feel free to post here about your progress and the spots where it starts to fail (i expect it to be the same as before , tbh . those adjustments it received in 1.3 are still not enough to make it shine )
i'll get to finish updating the sorc builds in the next days so i'll probably check out on the Mortred next . Sadly , i've seen no news about fixing Batstrike in the recent changelogs , so she most probably will stay dead this patch too ...