WOTLK - Can we get away with 2H tanking in Pre-WOTLK content? [Heirlooms]

I'm planning to level a Paladin with a friend and we're going to level as Prot / Holy and do quite a bit of LFD. We're both going to be in full Heirloom sets (Tank + Healer) and I'm wondering how far I can get tanking with a 2H heirloom.

Since there's no heirloom shield and this will be my first character on Icecrown, I'm trying to avoid tanking with a level 1 gray shield and praying for shield drops along the way. Just trying to decide on the 1H or 2H heirloom at this point.

As long as I can make it through to ramparts like this, I can just quest 67-80 as ret in northrend.

No, you can't. A lot of protection spec abilities require a shield. Even without those, a block is a block and it's better than a hit. Get the herilooom 1h and a shield will drop in some dungeon. You can maybe even get a cheap one off the AH (no more than 2-3g)

I figured as much, I was just hoping being fully heirloom stacked would be enough to allow Consecration and stats to carry me through lower level content while my healer basically had infinite mana.

Thanks

I'm now level 68 and I wanted to comment for anyone else running a Paladin that only happened to have the 2H Heirlioom weapon. Not having a shield is NOT going to be a problem for you, and you won't even notice it until you start getting into shield specific abilities at level 55. Even then, consecration is more than enough to hold aggro without any issues whatsoever (managing your taunts as necessary) and the dps avengers shield does is quite low.

TL:DR - Just Ret tank until TBC content.