Paladin vs Warrior tank decision help.

[Apatheist]

A warrior does not hold threat once casters start aoeing.

This is just not true. There are already videos on this forum of people having no trouble holding threat on their warrior tanks post-hotfix. This comp is also with a priest healer and without the advantage of salvation and retribution aura. He's also not using any TPS consumables that I can see.

I do have a rational/maybe irrational fear that i may need AOE healing and gate myself

Put it this way. There are no encounters a paladin can't heal but there are many a paladin can't tank. Most of them are in raids but there are quite a few dungeon encounters where having a warrior with taunt and viable defensive cooldowns will make everything so much easier. The interaction between limited invuln potions and AE taunt makes clearing some areas ridiculously simple.

Regarding AE healing - it's not an issue. A paladin can literally spam flash of light non stop in decent gear. With around 500 healing in close to preraid BiS and blessing of light flash of light rank 1 heals for about 700hp+ / 1.5s (without blessing of light) and costs 35 mana. Prayer of healing costs over 1,000 mana and heals for about 1600/3.5s party-wide. You can literally cast 29 flash R1 for the same cost as a single prayer and you'll still be full mana because you will regen faster than you're spending mana.

Actually, the only thing I would miss from a priest is an offensive dispel and fear ward. Paladin healing is far superior IMO. If you really need an offensive dispel you can swap to a felhunter and warriors already have tools to break fear.