"Cluster deformers" in Blender Does Blender have anything like Maya's (and, perhaps, C4D's) cluster deformer – the ability to group vertices and assign degrees of influence from the cluster parent to subsets of vertices in the cluster?

You can assign vertices to a vertex group and weight paint them accordingly, but what would be the analogue of the cluster parent here? A non-deforming bone?
It sounds to me like you're looking for the Hook modifier.