“Using automated tools is cheating”

The honest answer

It depends how you use them. If you only rely on automated tools, that’s really just vulnerability scanning. The key is knowing how to search for things manually.

I use automated tools on most engagements because they save time when the testing window is short, but I always manually test alongside them, and I always manually verify any finding. Why hand-write a Python script to enumerate web pages when ffuf can do it faster?

Use the tools. Just don’t let them do your thinking for you.