If I want to change a word on one line, I find it faster to do <esc>cw replacetext rather than use the mouse to select the text and then replace text.

If I want to do that on 2-3 lines, I just use /findtext n and . to redo the prev command.

Anything more than that becomes a full search/replace.

Ymmv. It's just what I find efficient, given my muscle memory.

The point is that single-cursor editing is a special case of multiple-cursor editing. If there's value in any single-cursor editing operations that don't use regex (or other indirectness) then they have value when used with multiple cursors, too.

The mouse doesn't necessarily come into the discussion at all.