Kotegaeshi is nice but you're better off throwing.
If you die to someone who types kanse at you and you're not being bashed, you deserve to die.

I don't really think of maledicts when I think of dying to assassins. It does have raid implications though (and don't forget confuse darts).

But yes throw+trance is already really strong alone, assassins do way too many things too well. I think you could even just take hide away and they'd still be reasonably good, not that they should lose hide.

Do they need to change? I don't know. I'd rather people just realize they're playing on training wheels when they play an assassin.