Riot doesn't realize what pro play requires.
Title. It keeps being said that Riot does a lot of updates focused around the professional scene. The latest attempt is to slightly nerf mages, so that maybe other roles can be played mid lane, mainly assassins, so that the game will be more exciting to watch or something (as if Assassins are fun to watch for everyone). Personally, even though at first it would be a good change, eventually a meta Zed mid lane pick will become boring, same as ANY other new champion coming in. Remember when Sion and Galio started becoming meta stables? People were happy for the change, and now people are BORED out of their minds. This will happen with any champion, so the excitement factor won't be there for long. But I digress.
The thing that Riot doesn't understand is that assassins will probably NEVER see play in competitive, consistently at least. They will never become a stable, and the reason is simple. They rely VERY HARD on snowballing an early need to be able to assassinate other enemies. Otherwise, it's hard to 1v1 people who know how to defend against Zed and will build appropriately as well. At the same time, there is a trend the past 2-3 years about what champions are played in competitive:
Top lane is usually occupied by a tank or a good splitpushing champion. Rarely you will see an assassin or a juggernaut like Darius. Why is that? Tanks are needed to absorb damage and apply CC (so, no Mundo, for example). They are also easy to play, compared to other types, so you can afford to make slight mistakes. Also, split pushers are played because they can use that play style to create pressure, if for example your teamfighting won't be strong.
Jungle. It's currently taken by tanks with good ganking pressure. Rarely do you see Nidalee, Elise or Lee Sin anymore (who can be described as assassins, at least earlier in the game) and that's because they are risky to play. Playing a tank jungler like Sejuani is a safe choice against everything and scales well into the late game.
Mid. Dominated by either waveclear mages with potential to roam (Taliyah, Galio) or niche picks like Sion who take advantage of current situations (Banner of Command rush, strong kit and numbers). This is required to have lane priority with a pushed wave so you can roam or assist your jungler invading the enemy jungle and provide aggressive vision. Assassins can't really do that. They can't outpush mages, so they can't have real impact. Their job is to kill enemies, and against professional players, that won't happen a lot. People will rush Ninja Tabi, maybe even return to playing more things like Sion mid, so the assassins' main job wil be nullified.
Bot lane consists of the ADC (most ADCs can work, depending on their numbers) and a support, which is mostly either a tank that can support (Braum, Taric, Kench) or an enchancer like Morgana, Janna.
What we get out of all this is that assassins don't really fit anywhere. For example, let's say you want your mid laner to gank the top lane. Galio for one has a semi global ultimate, so reaching top is much easier. He also has quite enough damage with his R, Q and E, while also having CC to set up the gank to success even more. Sure, Zed might provide more damage, but Galio offers CC, so in the end, you probably get the same damage output. Galio also has the option to tank the tower for a dive since he is generally tankier. There are many situations where we can compare an assassin vs any other role, and currently, assassins don't really offer much more damage in a multi-man skirmish and any other champion would. Zac can deal a lot of burst for example as well, not as much as Zed, but the CC he provides means that a teammate can follow up with more damage, since there is more time to do so. Therefore, having an assassin doesn't really matter. Seeing how the assassin isn't much stronger, it at all, during multi-player fights, then he must do something in the 1v1. As covered above though, players will take notice of this, and will play safer, and in order to avoid deaths, maybe even miss some cs here and there. This means that assassins needs to pack a very strong punch to succeed in the 1v1, which means that they need VERY BIG damage buffs. And guess what, that's not good, because it will break solo Q.
So, you either break soloQ to make assassins viable in pro play, or they don't become viable at all.
