I have pretty much stopped using pads. I use split surfaces instead. Again, like OP, hillside work.
Some pads are on grade then extend past the grade into the air. Pads will suck the topo up to the underside of the pad. You often don't want this.
Also pads are very finicky. They can't overlap a split topo. They can't overlap each other. Getting them to snap to the correct edge is not reliable enough. The snapping has a looser tolerance than Revit's error tolerance.
The elevation points of a topo region that are covered by a pad still exist and still influence the surrounding topo (via triangulation). In "real life" as in real dirt this is not the case. So I have found split surface to more reliable, less Revit warnings.
Sometimes if you have split surfaces and add a pad to the project it will automagically merge some of your other split surfaces. I went over this issue with tech support, it was reproduced, but no solution at this time.
So making the points snappable to a horizontal element like underside of slab would be very helpful. Also the snapping to contiguous topo surface edges is pretty dodgy. That could use some improvement.
Floor points have up and down draggable handles that can snap to things. This would be useful for topo points.
GChapp