We went with pavers for all of the reasons stated, just finished a couple of weeks ago and we had to deal with 2 leaking issues.
The first was when they were laying out the outline of the job they drove a metal stake into one of the return lines! @#$%^&*()$#@
Dumb but easy to fix
The second was that after the job was done one of the irrigation lines under the pavers had a leak and with the right tool it was a simple job of removing the paver stones, fixing the leak, re-bedding the sand base & re-install the stones. Our pavers are 3 different sizes with the largest one about 50lbs. No sweat with the tool which looks like a fancy Ice block tongs.