Yes, there are a few optimizations. Bounce count is the obvious one, and the denoiser is good enough that you can reduce the SPP as long as you don’t have high-frequency textures you care a lot about.
Also, how long did it take in Maya and/or Vray? I use the path-tracer relatively frequently (enough to have a hotkey for it), and I generally don’t run into scenes that take more than a few minutes to converge on the highest settings.
To be fair, I make good use of the denoiser, as I’m generally after accurate luminance and will save high SPP precision for final renders. 400spp and 8 bounces generally gets me the best results, for my workload.