I am sick of MPLAB-X IPE and for many months now I use Pickit2 and Pickit3 with a stand alone program developed by PICkitPlus Development Team at http://www.pickitplus.co.uk.

Cost is low and support is great by Evan.

For the Compiler to work it is necessary to install the mplab-x though. I do not know if/how only the assembler can be installed, so I installed the whole monster-package.

Ioannis