Have assassins lost part of their identity?

Let's discuss, here's how I see it but I'd love to hear your thoughts:

Assassins used to be considered the high-risk/high-reward champion class. They would often get bullied around until 6 and they'd come "online" and become a significant damage and roaming threat for mages and adcs. This was because their 6 was often powerful and allowed them to stick to their targets or reliably engage on them, with the exception of katarina who simply got enough damage to truly delete you.

They couldn't outpush or out-trade mages at the time due to how mana nerfs hadn't happened yet and morello rush was the most dominant build-path for most midlaners. In fact, the most common strategy as a mage into assassin matchup was to push them under tower with your superior wave clear and use the opportunity to harass and starve them as they tried to cs under tower. This strategy was to delay their online period and essentially shorten it, and it worked pretty well.

Now obviously they weren't as binary as I've stated so far. Zed was considered an exception to this rule because he could reliably cs with his W, and also found ways to poke/trade. Akali had unavoidable sustain that made pushing her under tower and harassing her difficult. Yasuo was considered a threat because he could out-trade and duel mages pre-6, but overall, the play-pattern and design philosophy from Riot around assassins was fairly consistent.

Fast forward to now, however. Mana nerfs have gone through, mana-potions removed, mage items (including morello) have changed, and a whole new rune system has been implemented. Meta assassins like Zed and Talon now easily out-push their lane opponents while also becoming an online 100-0 threat at lv.2 (or 3 for Zed). Katarina's damage has been tied to combo-ing her passive rather than her ult + kill resets, causing her to come online sooner too.

With this in perspective, could it be that a large part of why games have become more snowbally or why games feel like they have more damage in them is because Assassins have risen and ditched their downtimes and waiting periods to come online while mages have fallen back and can no longer contest with their counters at any point?

Lemme know what you guys think