Its not skillful when there are two mages in a lane spamming spells every one to two seconds; they missed their combo. They can just try again in five seconds, especially after they've gotten their mana items. They don't even really have to farm because they both can take Spellthiefs and just farm the procs. So saying that they need something to reward them for hitting their abilities is bullshit. And no, they do not need an item or two in order to do anything beyond be annoying. Brand would like a word with you.
Xerath is not a cheese pick, especially not when he's bot lane with immobile, squish ADCs who have low health regen; he out ranges many of them and many of their supports with his extreme artillery style attacks and only really has to get close enough to throw out one AA for mana and then retreat. If you give him someone like Lux as a "support" and suddenly, as long as one of them can land their skillshot CC, its no longer a "cheese" strat but an effective tactic. And regardless, if Xerath is a "cheese pick" than he's on the level of Taric mid and needs to be adjusted as such; Taric mid was also a cheese pick but has since become extremely problematic. I say nip "cheese picks" in the bud while they're small.
And finally, most of the players that actually played botlane are no longer playing botlane. This is supported by the fact that on a global scale, across all ranks and regions, the role "ADC" has dropped the the least mained role while top has skyrocketed into the most(Source: https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/main-stats/all ). The only people going bot now with any regularity are top and mid mains so they know the match ups just fine. And again, even if it does happen to be an ADC main actually playing an ADC bot lane, it doesn't matter if they know the match up or not; they are playing generally a low mobility champion with purposefully nerfed health regen, low defenses(we're talking like 25-30 MR at level 1), and no meaningful ways of sustaining themselves with their primary keystone having been gutted and, ironically, made better for AP champions. Any poke a double mage bot lane lands is going to stick, is going to do a decent chunk of damage, and is honestly free and easy when the person they're aiming at would literally need scripts in order to perfectly dodge the six or so skillshots being lobbed at them every 2-6 seconds.
You also didn't address the fact that many of these picks are abusing the support starting items to get essentially free gold and, honestly, unfair levels of sustain since support items are specifically kept cheap and allow supports to buy three pots instead of just one or two. One of the weaknesses of a melee champion into a ranged champion match up is specifically supposed to be that they're melee and the ranged champion can poke them out and zone. Unless the other laner is literally a double mage bot lane, no one has enough damage to affectively poke out these melee picks who are going double relic and getting shittons of healing off that as well as getting three pots and extra health. This is the same kind of shit that got relic shield nerfed and changed for marksmen; why are melee champions who are already hard to poke out and can honestly all in most squishies at level 3 or more getting to do the same abuse?
Like I said, its patently clear that they aren't going to fix or help marksmen in the least. However, that doesn't excuse them from balancing the new botlane meta so that certain picks are just absolutely steamrolling the game. There's honestly no excuse as to why I should go Xayah and be unable to poke out a Garen "support" because he has bone plating, his passive, three health pots, and relic while at the same time be unable to survive the extreme poke from a Zoe "ADC" who also has more pots than I do and gets a far longer range.
