I turned it up to high and noticed a little improvement. Still kill-trading though.

It also makes me wonder if, when you turn your tickrate up, nobody else gets easier for you to kill, you just get easier for everyone else to kill. A lot of games reward the laggiest player...

That's not really what tickrate is about. It's not going to make you or others easier or harder to kill. It merely brings better parity between what you see and what the server sees. Prior to this update, the tickrate on clients was 10 while the servers were at 30.

Detailed look at it for CS: http://game.kingj.net/pages/extra-tickrate Even this article is a bit old but you get the general idea.

It... I guess in the simplest terms makes it so that the things you see and aim at are where they should be. It brings a bit more uniformity to the game for everyone. So then it becomes more of a game of skill rather than one of complete and total random BS where you die seconds after you've already taken cover, for instance.

I've noticed the hit detection has been a lot better since this update. I'm actually getting hits when I should be and I haven't noticed any crap where I'm dead after I've already rounded a corner.

It's not perfect. It's not up there yet with the super high tickrates that Counter-Strike has, but it's a damn good start.

I just worry at users being able to set the tick rate that favors them rather than favors the server and everyone fighting against them.

Especially with it defaulting to a low tickrate, will they be able to 'miss' me and since the server sees their low tickrate it calls it a hit anyway, since that's where I was on their screen even if that's not where I actually was?

A lot of games reward the laggiest player, giving them handicaps and such, giving hits when there shouldn't be hits, avoiding being hit when you should have been, etc.

No, it has no impact on that. You're thinking about it the wrong way.