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Samurai is my all-time favorite class. I love how reliable the rotation is. It might seem kind of repetitive, but I don't mind that. I was wondering which other jobs are most like SAM in terms of playstyle. I'm guessing ninja...maybe dragoon? I'm not sure which one to start next. I heard dragoon is needlessly complex. Help a girl out here. :)
Hmm...hard to say, NIN I would argue is too different, DRG has some parallels, but not massive ones, but possibly MNK is closest, and of course each have their differences.
Well, the melee jobs are all fairly unique.
Sam- build up your Sen with a reliable rotation and fillers to align with buff windows. Spend Sen on Iajutsu. Weave Kenki abilities in between. Use Shoha as stacks build. Being a recently built job, it was built extremely well and it's why it's my favorite as well.
Drg- Fairly basic rotations- you use Chaos Thrust Combo and Heavy Thrust combo, throwing in Wheeling and Fang/Claw depending on your level. Their combos are longer (5 attacks at 64+), but the timers are designed for you to alternate back and forth between each combo. They have lots of buffs and oGCDs to weave in between, you try to frontload a lot, but also get tuned abilities like Mirage Dive and Geirskogul/Nastrond you you focused every 30 seconds. It's a bit complex, but not as bad as you think. Some of the buffs don't line up well (like Dragon Sight), but overall the class isn't that bad to play. If you're used to weaving oGCDs in with Sam, you can do it with Drg, you just need to hit a lot of different buttons instead of spamming Shinten. I recommend a macro for Dragon Sight to make life easier. Hardest part is remembering to keep Blood of the Dragon up at levels where it falls off easily. Not much of an issue 70+. The job is actually pretty basic until the 60s (specifically 64+).
Ninja- Slowed down in latest patch but playstyle is very different from Samurai. Relies on putting it all into burst phase every minute (two for TA phase), which can get complicated, spamming Ninjutsus/oGCDs/Shadow Fang during that time with a fairly boring downtime outside of that consisting of Aeolian Edge combo spam unless you need to refresh Huton. I think you can use one Ninjutsu in this time without screwing it up for the next phase.
Monk- Is messy right now due to all the hot fixes and tweaks they've gotten over the years without a real overhaul. I feel like it's a bit of a cross between Sam and Ninja. Like Sam, you want to use your combos to keep your damage buff and DoT up. Combos are a bit more flexible, but the big limitation being Dragon Kick having to be used before Bootshine now to get the damage buff. Like Ninja, you need to keep your speed boost up with Greased Lightning because if it falls off it's a significant damage loss due to the ramp up time it needs to recover. Playstyle is very fast paced compared to Sam. Theres a few self-buffs and a couple party buffs. It has a lot of positionals to worry about, so you want to try and line up Riddle of Earth and True Norths so you can ignore most of them (you can get like 50 seconds of ignoring them total, which is a lot). Has a mechanic like Sam Meditation stacks with Chakra, but because it's based on crits, is less predictable. I'm the least familiar with this job as it's only 64.
For me personally, I felt I grasped Drg easier than Nin or Mnk leveling up and had the most fun with it out of those three.
Hope this helps!
I would say Monk is probably the most similar to Samurai of the other Melee. It has a fast GCD and it has a nonlinear combos based around a priority system for upkeeping your buffs, which is somewhat similar to what Samurai has with its three branching combos, and it's a 'Greedy'(er) job with a focus on personal damage while it's ability to buff the party just about evens out to what it receives from buffs.
However to be completely honest, Samurai feels like a version of Monk that is just better in every way, while Monk feels like you're looking at an early draft of Samurai. The concepts there are similar but the execution of Monk is just worse. Beyond the similarities the two have in their flow, many of the design principles Monk had at one point and were removed are now a part of Samurai (extra weaponskill GCDs that don't break your combos were once Monk's thing), and often in a more effective form (The Third Eye/Hissatsu:Seigen interaction is a better implementation of Featherfoot/Haymaker). Meanwhile the lessons that Samurai (and other Melee jobs) has learned and benefited from haven't actually been used to improve Monk (fairly rigid timers instead of Samurai's very flexible ones) and there are a lot of skills in Monks kit that are substantially less useful than Shoha was in 5.0 that we've had for years now that haven't been changed during expansions despite player outcry. Samurai's gauge is the most well developed of the Melee, while Monk's is practically an afterthought.
Black Mage!