Radicals would be useful if they were based upon actual meanings rather than random “Lip rings” and such. Or if they were organized in a way that gave you useful skills (dictionary lookup comes to mind). As is, they’re a distraction. Since many, perhaps most, of them are actual kanji, I’d much prefer to learn the kanji itself, where the meaning is actually relevant in cases where it applies.
They’re also a delaying tactic. I have a good visual memory. Once I’ve seen the shape and stroke order a couple of times, I don’t need that much repetition to start seeing kanji that use them as a component.
The only value I really see to how WK sets them up is they use them in the mnemonics. I don’t because I found in my last go through that there were too many inconsistencies in how WK does its mnemonics, so I just make up my own which I know won’t lead me astray.
Honestly, I’m tempted to give every one of them a synonym of “radical” and skip the whole thing this time. I haven’t quite done it, but I’m really tempted.
Side Note: For anyone interested here is a thread I started a year or so ago talking about a different way to do mnemonics which I find much more reliable.