Is the meta "pick an assassin and hope for the best?"

That's honestly the only things I see in-game.

At least one of these shows up almost every single game. I'd say at least 3 are in a game about 40-50% of the time.

The only reason I don't try to cheese an assassin to get to gold is because I want to actually learn to play midlane mages and I like the class... but over the last few months I've just been gettting more annoyed with how useless I feel because of how easily assassins capitalize on your tiny mistakes. Sure you can play against them, but it's a lot faster learning to play the champion well than it is to learn to perfectly play against them. If I didn't love mages I would just autolock Talon or Quinn or Zed mid, or Udyr/Pantheon jungle and bruteforce ranked games. It's getting increasingly frustrating and eventually I'm just going to quit when this game isn't fun for me anymore.

The worst part is that it doesn't seem like it will change anytime soon. Champions keep getting more mobile and more intense. Immobile mages struggle hard and will keep struggling.