I know that 3DS Max has better primitives, e.g. you can set the number of 'steps'  much easier than you can in Blender. 3ds Max has a really nice all-around workflow, but Blender has been catching up with modifiers and other areas making it an increasingly strong alternative. One strong point of Blender is its scene hierarchy in the Outliner, which really isn't present in Max.

However, what you should really do is download the trial version and try both programs to see which is better. Since Blender is free, you might want both.

It is better to do one thing well, than to do many things and excel at nothing.