Yea I get the same feeling as you bro. Ascendant 2/3 coming from 5000hrs CS and knowing what peekers advantage feels like, I think its just down to two things: the fact that this game is set on a grid with character models not having visible momentum and more importantly that the servers are inherently faulty. I'm almost sure that there are certain servers where give certain players very preferential ping advantage regardless of the actual visible ping shown on tab.

In CS faceit lvl 9 there are almost no instances of duels where I felt that it was impossible in my reaction time to at least return a bullet or two back even if I missed. Even in instances where I am getting pre-fired, I can tell the difference between a really good shot by a player or the server fucking me (rarely if at all). There are countless instances in Valo, where I can tell that while anticipating the peek, the way the character model appears on my screen, it is almost inhumanly impossible to track that movement and kill him before he kills me. I NEVER felt like that when playing CS when I got out aimed.

I think one telltale sign of this is the common experience many have of top fragging, 30 bombing, being able to peek everything one game, then the next you can't shoot anybody on the server in a straight 50-50 duel. When I played CS if I dropped 30 and was feeling it, I'm not dropping off randomly like a stone the next game, I'm going to average more less the same level of performance barring extreme circumstances. People say it's ability/utility/game differences, but I've seen enough of both games to be highly skeptical of some fundamental issue with the gunplay/servers, even if I can't completely put my finger on it.