I suppose everything is important. There are drop-in replacements for the 349 that sound very good, and I could easily live with the MUCH cheaper alternative. However, the 349, as used in my amp, is run very gently and will last a very long time so I don't worry about using it up I have spares). The input/driver tube for my amp is the 348 tube which is also a very expensive tube. It too is better than its drop in replacements, but that drop in replacement is very close in sound and is extremely low in cost. It is almost impossible to find 348s being sold. The last pair of supposedly NOS tubes I saw sold for $2,000 each (I need four), and some crazy person was selling dead 348s to Western Electric collectors for $1,600 each. The drop in replacement sells for around $8 a tube. These days I run the $8 tube in my amp and in my linestage which also uses the 348. My linestage also runs 310a and 310b tubes, and these are becoming pricey too.
How much one is wiling to pay to run the very best tubes for a particular amp is a matter of personal priorities and finances. I know people with magnificent clones or rebuilds of Western Electric 124 amps that run 6L6 tubes in the amp because the better sounding 350B tube is too expensive, in their judgment. I can understand that choice as the 6L6 in these amps do sound pretty good.
For my personal taste, I will take a 124 amp (pushpull, two output tubes per channel) running either 6L6 or 350B over all of the 300B SET and parallel SET amps I've heard. My 349 amp is a clone of a Western Electric 133 amp and sounds very similar to a 124 amp. It has the same output transformers as 124 amps, but it also has input transformers that the 124 does not have, and it outputs a little bit less power.