No. It makes a massive difference. Even if you're locked out from your email account, you can still login no problem to any website using your username/email and password.
Yes, to be fair, that's still a marginal improvement, assuming you aren't forced to validate your email address at any point, which might be the case for lower security stuff. On the other hand, either way, you can often use an existing session to do the same thing without needing to reauthenticate.
