The simplest way to describe the fidelity and control you get with artisan is to imagine trying to sculpt clay while wearing boxing gloves.Maya has the base tools needed to model (well at least by 1985 standards) but it could dearly use some updates for better control, precision, and ease of modeling. Simply take a short list of features from a more modern modeling application like modo and pin it to a wall and start throwing darts!
Better selection tools, better precision, fall offs, background constraints, better sculpting tools, better uv'ing tools, more accurate bevels and champfers, surfacing tools, better asset management and those are just a short list of polygon improvements!
Nurbs needs a major overhaul as well. I prefer NURB's to splines but half the time maya's nurbs tools do not work or require all sorts of convoluted tricks to get them to work properly and then you have to play endlessly with the tesselation, which always confused me since alias also made one of the best automotive nurbs based surfacing appliations called studiotools. I never understood why the maya's nurbs tools were so inferior to the tool set in studiotools. But that is another topic of debate.
oint on Poly constraint: 
