Thanks for the reply,

That tool doesn't seem to work on polygon components and unfortunately I'm working only in polygons, but it does do the kind of thing that I want to be able to do.

As in the image that i have attached, I want to be able to just move a vertex in say the corner of a character's mouth and for this to influence the other vertices around it.

Are deformers like wire and clusters the best way of doing this in Maya?

They just don't seem quite as quick and easy as Soft Selection is, for doing little tweaks.

Thanks.