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).