i'm only familiar with joint rigging, but perhaps a cluster deformer might work for you? just an idea, havent done it myself i believe a cluster deformer is kind of like selecting a component with soft selection enabled this might also be of interest : Maya 2020 | Rivet Command (youtube.com)
Yeah. I used that on the root of my grass cards to have softer transition. You can also enable dithered lod transitions to made the lod change less evident. These only work correctly when taa is enabled though.