Since you didn't go into specifics, I will tell you what I know about Blender's proportional editing and its axis/pivot control, and you can hopefully tell me how to get closer to the described behaviour? You can select 'enabled' under proportional editing, as well as 'connected' which is like 'surface' in Wings. You can…
Didn't read thru all the comments, I saw there was already some really good ones tho. My advice, besides the obvious of keep practicing is to take time to setup hotkeys and customize ui, etc. I have been using this n52 gamer pad te for the last 7 years I've worked in the game industry for example. I actually own 3 of them…