You won't ever have an issue with dry paste, and from what I can tell the CPU/GPU only runs a degree or so hotter than when using premium thermal paste.
Stock paste goes for longevity and cooling, so it's kinda crummy at both.
Thermal pads go for longevity with a sacrifice to cooling.
High performance paste like arctic silver goes for cooling over longevity; but can be re-applied many times as it doesn't damage hardware.
Liquid metal like Thermal Grizzly's: conductonaught, goes for extreme cooling at the expense of hardware. (IE; it will literally eat your computer, slowly, over time).
According to a Linus techtips video on Youtube the difference is not really measurable. So I kind of tend to think that a high quality thermal pad is just simply superior in every way. The only reason I didn't try it, is because I couldn't find any in stock.
far inferior is a pretty huge exaggeration, graphite pads are plainly good enough in the vast majority of cases, without all the annoying downsides of paste.
You won't ever have an issue with dry paste, and from what I can tell the CPU/GPU only runs a degree or so hotter than when using premium thermal paste.