I totally agree that mr is outdated.

It seems to me that some people learning maya, don't learn much about mental ray initially. they end up just turning on final gather, global illumination, dof and bokeh. Then they set the globals to production quality preset and inevitably they get painfully slow renders. I guess this is why people search for the fabled lightening renderer that will also give them better looking, more realistic renders. you need to learn how to light and render regardless of the render software you use.