Should I get an Empress Heavy Menace or something else for stuff like metalcore and other high gain metal stuff?

First of all, the built in noise gate seems very nice. Which is why I was also looking at the 5150 overdrive. I have a katana. (I don't use built in distortion because 1 we all have pedal problems and 2 I need to be able to switch in and out of clean and distorted quickly) The katanas noise gate when using a distortion pedal is literally useless. Right now I have a filaments, and it's pretty good for the most part, but I don't like the fact that there are no mid controls, and built in noise gate would be great.

And also another question. Would using the effects loop in any way be a good idea even if I'm using a pedal for distortion, or is it basically useless at that point?