Thanks for your post, but why would you discourage it if the system is apart? It's my business. Moreover, you are assuming that chains and sprockets wear in the same way. I assert that they do not - please let me explain.
Consider the surface area on a sprocket tooth, and how it engages the chain (be it a conventional roller chain or a "hy-vo" chain as used by the super 10 cam chain). The contact area between the sprocket tooth face and the face (hy-vo) or chain roller (roller chain) is significantly larger than the contact area between the pin and the chain plates (be it the hy-vo chain or a roller chain). The weak link? The diameter of the pin.
The engineering stress on the PIN is much higher than the engineering stress on the plates. Moreover, the plates ROTATE on the pin, whereas the plates or rollers DO NOT move with respect to the tooth face of the sprocket (when everything is new - as things wear, you have a bit of sliding as contact is made, but once contact is made, they don't move with respect to one another.) The rotation of the plates on the pin is what causes the chain wear. As the pin wears, the pitch length of the chain increases, and this increase in pitch length requires that the sprocket wear to accommodate the increase in pitch length. This happens because the tension of the chain is not evenly distributed along the circumference of the sprocket, so a few teeth take significantly higher loads with a worn chain than do teeth take with a new chain.
When I was in graduate school, i was VERY poor, and trying to race bicycles. I did the math, and if i replaced chains every 1K miles, I could have my freewheel and chainrings last about 7K miles. If i just went with one chain, my life would be about 4K miles. Chains then were $5, so it was much cheaper for me to replace chains at that interval than it was to replace the driveline (this was in the age of freewheels, not cassettes).
That all being said, RCinNC's observation about everything being well designed, and if this runs in clean oil probably makes my argument moot. If i wasn't going to replace the tensioner, i wouldn't replace the chain. BUT, for $23 additional, i can put a new chain in. I have thing apart already, and the chain is ~$7 more than the gasket! At the very least, it will buy me 25K more miles than if i didn't replace it, which comes to $0.10 per mile for that 25K miles. (I would argue that the loading on the timing system is less than the driveline, but loading doesn't matter as much as the engineering stress on the components.)
Thanks for reading.