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im sure everyone has their own opinions.and im sure its been debated alot..but as a LEAD guitarist..what are my pros / cons of going with a floyd over a hardtail or hardtail over a floyd ?

With a good floyd, you get all kind of trem bar tricks and unrivaled tuning stability.

With a hardtail you can change strings faster in the beginning. After a few changes with a floyd, however, it becomes a breeze and there isn't such a big difference.
I have to point out that in my experience and opinion, all those horror stories of floyds and tuning difficulties are far from the truth. Of course there are a couple of more screws than on a hardtail, but come on, how hard can it be to turn a couple of screws?

There are some tonal differences, but I don't think that the other is better and other is worse. They are different. I haven't had identical guitars with floyds and without, so I won't get deeper into it.

A Floyd is the way to go if you abuse your whammy bar a lot.

A hardtail sounds better IMO.

I suppose you ought to go out and try both and see what you like. Personally, I'm not a fan of the feel of a Floyd, especially under palm muting (even worse is a floating floyd, were the pressure of my palm seems to raise pitch). But when it comes to tremolo tricks, nothing beats a Floyd.

In terms of tuning stability, authentic floyds are very stable (not as stable as a hardtail, but still very stable). The question may boil down to trem vs. hardtail. If that's the case, then is there any reason why you have to own a Floyd? I've got a Wilkinson on my Ibanez with locking tuners and graphite nut, and as long as you don't dive bomb as low as possible, it stays in tune very well. Just a thought.

Another thing to keep in mind is when you dig in and bend a note, the rest of the strings go flat. I had to block my Floyd in order to keep this from happening, I never really used it anyway.

Buy a floyd if you'll use it.

Don't buy one if you won't.

It's as simple as that, really.