Because AA is free and available to me, whereas crafting UVd swords, Skolver Set and Heart trinkies would be for the express purpose of sword-striker PvPing, which I don't do that much. I wouldn't use any of that in my CW runs at all; I don't want to craft all that just for a side-interest in LD.
maybe competitive in the sense that you're hard as [bucket] to kill.
When anyone can kill you in two hits, ^ is all that matters. It takes me 5 hits to kill them anyways, so I'm in no rush to end the fight; I'm only interested in surviving past the first two seconds.
See, I don't follow your logic here. You don't use HP trinks or UVs, yet you do use AA.
Do you see AA as the least of the helpful things to use it? Or otherwise, why not use HP trinks or UVs? If you use AA to be equalized with HP trink users or UVers, and think it's stupid to turn it off just for ego purposes, why not use HP trinks and/or UVs?
I don't see AAing with a hammer as productive, maybe competitive in the sense that you're hard as [bucket] to kill.
For my part, I don't use any of them because I'm F2P and can't waste money on things specifically for LD. As for AA, I find it more challenging to play without it. Simply put, I'd rather not people accuse me of using AA when I don't have the Heart trinks or UVs that they have.
So, that should send a clear message that I wouldn't mark myself for using AA even if I did.
~Sev