If that is intended, it could explain why only a low % of the gear obtained is Fae touched. However, I believe it would also be a bad decision, since you would be effectively making the dreamhold gear worthless and the seasonal goals too hard to get. It would be another decision to promote spending money without any regard to players.
According to the update notes, the variant ability should replace the original ability. So either the explanation is wrong and variant gear gets both the original and the variant abilities, or the variant gear dropped is bugged and it should only have the variant ability. Can you clear this @Jeto ? Thank you.