I do a lot of pans, both nodal on tripod and hand held. I find that modern stitching software allows you to get away with quite a bit on a outdoor scene, not true however with a static subject, building, bridge etc.
I use both zoom's and primes, mainly it depends on the lens I have at the time. I like the 35mm Art Sigma and the Rokinon 24mm 1.4 (both I tend to pan vertically multiple segments to get a final landscape layout image. But I will also pan in the horizontal. One issue you have with a wide lens, is the wide angle distortion, say from 21mm to 14mm and as you pan, this will also make parts of the image totally change their shape as they move away from the center of the shot. Finding the nodal point helps on some of this, but it won't fix basic wide angle distortion as wide angle lenses.
Prime vs Zoom optical quality for the focal range I use, 21mm to 50mm mainly I find both types of lenses do fine for the shots I like to take. I am using the Nikon lineup and their wide to normal zoom do a great job.
The software out there now really helps also. CC's software does a great job most of the time on single row work unless I have gone very wide, and ptgui or autopano both have strengths with multi row work.
The key here is in a landscape shot (outdoor scene) the warping can work to blend to the images together so that you won't see seam lines or gaps, and with rocks, trees sky and water warping most times won't alter the scene enough to make a serious change. It's when you have long running lines like with buildings, bridges, ships, etc, man made objects where the eye can see the warping errors, and on these subjects I prefer to move the camera (with a zork adapter 35mm or arca camera MF). TS-E lenses especially the new Canon lenses, are great tools also, both the 17mm and 24mm are great all the way to 12mm of stitching. Sadly they won't work on Nikon bodies and Nikon's wide TS-E the 24mm is not as good as the Canon lenses.
Paul