Glad to hear it was helpful.
You shouldn't need to do manual edges for every mesh, but in some areas it can be helpful for deformation. Not having to create manual edges speeds up the workflow quite a lot.
Regarding better weights. Manual edges doesn't create better weights, but can help you set up your weights faster. Coming from a 3D background I sometimes find it hard not to create manual edges for everything, but for 2D it is simply not required to do so.
