First time users of vim would use the arrow keys too. Only after you gain some experience do you start thinking with motions.

The same holds true for Sublime Text. Instead of using the arrow keys, you could do any of the following:

  Ctrl+H : Replace
  bar : Find what
  baz : Replace with
  Ctrl+Shift+H : Replace first match
  <esc> : Exit replace mode

or

  Ctrl + I : Incremental Find (finds and selects finding)
  bar : Find & select text
  baz : Overwrite selection

or

  Ctrl+<Right>+<Right>+<Right>+<Right> : Reach the word bar
  Ctrl+d : Select word under cursor
  baz : Overwrite selection

or

  Ctrl+P : GoTo Anything
  # : Goto word
  bar : Goto word 'bar' & select it
  baz : Overwrite selection

I agree that vim's vocabulary is very expressive and very powerfull. I switched to Sublime Text because tweaking vim to meet my needs was just too much effort, even for simple things. Couple this with even more effort to make it play nice with Greek (my native language), and the switch came naturally.