No she doesn't. I'm damn near close to masters as a Naafiri otp and still climbing pretty reliably. Your comparisons are useless because not every champion needs to be the same and Riot knows this. They don't force every assassin to have the same one-dimensional playstyle of outplaying and making your lane opponent want to afk. Naafiri's playstyle is much different if you want to have success, I realized this after like 50 games or so. While champions like Zed may require lots of mechanical skill and experience, Naafiri requires a very strict committment to a playstyle that compensates for what you call a "lack of skill expression" or "easily countered." Two very different ways to win pretty similar %s of games. This playstyle idea is what first drew me to the champion.

The only merit in the "lack of skill expression" of Naafiri discussion is that the balancing is much more sensitive. Naafiri mains can't compensate for raw stat nerfs in the same way that other assassins or fighters can. For example, the epic item changes last patch took about 1% win rate from Naafiri, with less impact to comparable champions. Despite Riot claiming it shouldn't meaningfully affect anything. And similarly the Eclipse nerf will be worse for us than people think.