so ctbram, basically what you're saying is that Maya is really only good for doing Polygon type modeling and that's about it? (modeling tools wise)
That doesn't sound very promising
I was under the impression once Autodesk took over, that they'd create a package that would almost rival 3DS Max in terms of productivity and tooling.

Hopefully, there'll be enough stink made about this from the dedicated hard-core users and this too will change sometime in the future .........