Well most of the issues have been with MR satellite so vray may be better, and i'm definitely not saying you need a render manager it can be done without one of course.

Most of the problems i've experienced with MR DR have been missing textures, not reading from UNC shares (needing to use a mapped network drive) not reading file caches correctly... the latest problem is with UV tiles MR DR sends out the first file in the sequence but does not send the subsequent files. Colour management on images in maya is working with MR DR on single frames but not on batch rendered frames.

Basically now a days I don't render animations without a render manager so it's been awhile since i've had any real problems.

I don't want to put you off you should be able to render out with Vray DR just expect it to be a PITA in my experience.

Sorry I can't be more vray specific I use it for still shots and for that the DR works like a charm.
Dave