Cur­rent chmod com­mand imple­men­ta­tions have already read the stat struc­ture before set­ting the new per­mis­sions (checked on FreeB­SD and Solaris source), so there is real­ly no ben­e­fit for absolute mode over sym­bol­ic mode.

Even absolute mode is not 100% absolute. For non-regular files the inter­pre­ta­tion is imple­men­ta­tion depen­dent. Quot­ing Solaris man page for chmod(1):
For direc­to­ries, the set­gid bit can­not be set (or cleared)
in absolute mode; it must be set (or cleared) in symbolic
mode using g+s (or g‑s).

Also the inode should already be in the inode cache. Even find needs the stat struc­ture (-type f).