Even if one healing tool literally Pareto dominated another according to the ordinary direction of "better" and "worse" item stat values, a much stronger claim than the one presented here, it would not follow that a game design mistake let alone a scam has occurred. It is no part of proper design to ensure that all items are "balanced" in the strong sense of uniform viability, either in a vacuum or net of their market prices. Figuring out which items and actions are best suited to particular goals and contexts is the Entropian's domain, not the developer's. It is a part of proper design to ensure that items are balanced in the weaker sense of guarding against a small number of overpowered items trivializing this task of the Entropian, but that's not what is being suggested here. It is supposed to be possible to make non-permanent, correctable strategic mistakes, as a way of differentiating outcomes between different Entropians, as well as a prerequisite to strategic growth over time.
Moreover, the ordinary direction of "better" and "worse" item stat values may be treated as a solid heuristic for Entropians to act upon, but should not be treated as an absolute, especially at the level of game design. There may be, and have historically been, niche reasons to prefer lower DPP, slower run speed increase, etc., and these may in some cases be discovered only by a small minority of Entropians and thus invisible to both developers and community-driven development conversations. Therefore, such development talk should be quite wary of attributing even Pareto domination status to items, and should focus on opportunities afforded to Entropians moreso than outcomes.
Now if you want to criticize the mission system more broadly in light of the way it masks the proper role of the Entropian to map goals and contexts to items and actions behind a top-down prepackaged unit of content, which some may subconsciously and falsely interpret as a developer endorsement, I'm all for that critique. But the proper solution is not to fiddle with item stats so that every action trajectory is uniformly viable, it is to challenge systems which implicitly emit an aura of developer endorsement.
