I'm confused- what advantages of going Dragoon over Samurai?

[Ozymandis]

I'm quickly levelling up towards 30 and my advanced melee job. But I'm having a hard time deciding what to go for. I first thought that I would go Dragoon, but I'm confused about something- why choose DRG over Samurai? I know you get the dragon, but I've seen that AE attacks make it tough to keep, and I know you get somewat-higher polearm proficiency/to use lances, so you'll get Penta-thrust earlier.

Is there some other bonus to being a Dragoon over a Samurai? Besides the great AF armor, of course :)

[Riva]

Dragoons deal more damage then a samurai, by alot from what I have seen. You also get jumps as extra attacks and to shed hate.

[Ozymandis]

Hmm. I guess the combination of Lances/higher proficiency does make a difference even without the Dragon? Supposedly Dragoon has higher strength as well?

Bah. I wasn't really considering Samurai anyway, to be honest. I think Galka Samurai look cool, but I'm watching my brother level his SAM now, and it seems pretty dull. You get the Great Katanas, which look great, but aside from that I can't think of any reason why I'd rather play Samurai. Better Skillchains with GK, maybe.

Dark Knight is the only other class that I'm seriously considering. I've got maybe 4 days to level 30, so that should give me ample time to decide :)

[Elusivellama]

Try this stat calculator here:

http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~nhart/Status_calculator.htm

It only shows the stats, not the job traits or job abilities, etc. I plugged in some values, and the DRG gets more str and less dex than the SAM. Of course, you still have to consider the job traits of the Dragoon such as attack bonus at level 10, dragon killer at level 25 (kind of useless overall), and accuracy bonus at level 30.

Then there're the jump attacks, which I believe (as of being a level 20 dragoon) are the true defining abilities of this job. Going on what I've been told...normal jump is like an extra attack. High jump is like normal jump, but it sheds some hate. Super high jump does no damage, but it completely resets any hate built up towards you.

So if you unleashed a flurry of pentathrusts, jump and high jump attacks, and you now have the monster's undivided attention, just use super jump and it forgets all about you. I'm not positive if super jump can be used to avoid damaging special attacks (like pugil screwdriver, gob bomb, etc), but I'm pretty sure it can be used that way.

I'm sure that the super jump's 5 minute timer is there to prevent wanton abuse of the ability (ie. spam penta, super jump, spam penta, super jump, etc..), but at least you can shed hate at will. Of the damage dealer jobs (DRK, SAM, MNK, RNG, THF, DRG), it seems only the THF and DRG can deal high damage and get away relatively unscathed. If I'm wrong, somebody please correct me...