Many of the websites we use these days are so link-heavy (or just not designed with keyboards in mind?) that pressing f, parsing the characters of the link I want, and then typing them, is still slower are at least more mental effort than using the mouse.
I'm already looking at a link when I want to 'click' it, so bringing up the shortcuts puts the relevant one right in the center of my vision. I don't know if it was faster (I have the same question about vim!) but it was fast enough, and more satisfying.
Then again, the point of my i3/qutebrowser/etc box was to be keyboard-centric, and I would use it with a "the mouse is lava" philosophy. I should really stand that box up again; too much macOS is bad for the soul...