Early level 50 assassin suggestions

My fiance is having alot issues since the 1.0 update and am looking for advice on how to build an assassin with the changes.

Her gear score is just shy of 1100 and can’t get through an easy skirmish anymore with their scores at 1400. I was having her try from the shadows to get some extra armor but she rarely lives long enough to even cast the ultimate spell to make it work and using the revamped posion spell to make purple gems isnt really doing much either.

While using a secondary character to actually play the game and try and level up gear, is there any spells or something to try out or level up that seem to work?

Any ideas would be great!