What kind of Armor would you try to get on an arena meele?
EE or stats? Or a combination.

Of course, having everything is great but in practice (due to prices) this means that all stats are a lot lower.
So what would you prefer? High Armor or charm-like stats?

For a heavy melee character a combination of stats and ee would be very desired,
but as you already assumed these are much more expensive if you want both on the same armor.

Personally i prefer to use stat gear on arena for more offensive power and shift to ee armors if tanking is needed on catacombs.
In arena, its only the mob and you. On catas, others can help to deal damage whereas 1 person can focus on the tanking.

EE armors can increase your mcc ( mob chain counter ) as you take less damage,
but the overall killing speed goes down as you do less damage yourself without the additional stat points.

Its up to you here to a large extent which path you prefer and which kind of gear you can afford.