Hi I am a long time Max user but I am about to try Blender since I heard that it’s better
OK I have some questions under some areas
Can Blender do
SSS?
Fur and Hair? and what are the render times like?
Normal mapping?
Displacement?
Animation layer?
Arch & design Mat?
muscle simulation
Fire?
Water?
Ambient Occulsion?
SSS? . . . Yes
Fur and Hair? . . . Yes
and what are the render times like? . . . varies depending on multiple factors
Normal mapping? . . . Yes
Displacement? . . . Yes
Animation layer? . . . Not sure what you mean by animation “layer”
Arch & design Mat? . . . if you mean preset materials, then No
muscle simulation . . . No
Fire? . . . No (approximation with particles is possible)
Water? . . . Yes
Ambient Occulsion? . . . Yes
muscle simulation
you can do things like… make biceps bulge when the arm bone curls, automatically. i’m not sure if that’s what you mean.
Fire?
i’ve seen it done using particles, and halo materials… or subdivided sphere mesh and halo materials (still image)…
I see… Oh yes can I render passes like say SSS passes or reflections while I hide the rest of the objects?
Oh yah can it do final gather and GI and the like?
I see… Oh yes can I render passes like say SSS passes or reflections while I hide the rest of the objects?
there are 20 render layers which you can use for making passes… you have to use nodes, i guess.
Oh yah can it do final gather and GI and the like?
it has AO, which is a fake GI, but for GI you can resort to external renderers like yafray, indigo, luxrenderer… i think it also can be used with maxwell. i’ve only tried yafray 
oh, it can also do radiosity solutions…
i read on one thread that one of the plans is also to implement Fast GI in 2.5.