I was messing with scale and translation, buttons next to edit and such, and grasp that you draw a line through mesh and use the handles. but I was wondering, is there a way to set this to a more traditional way like other modelers, with an axis and a wheel? I have such a hard time grasping using it the default way and tend to do some of the most interesting horrible warps in the mesh.
Yeah, it would be great to have that, but I don’t think it exists in ZBrush’s edit mode…
My advice is to keep learning the damn thing… 
I customized my UI with some of the sliders from the Deformation palette. Also some scripts you might find handy. You can find screen grabs of it (and files)at link below post. Happy ZBrushing. (For optimal results there are some useful scripts posted by others for mouse wheel zoom as well as other neat things).
Thank you for that info I will look over them now
I do not think it exists in edit mode ZBrush
I would advise just getting comfortable with the transpose line. It is incredibly powerful and intrinsic to ZB’s workflow.