The pads are just fine. My Blue Pearl has similar sort of pads - two big ones rather than 4 small ones and they are rock hard when dry, but get nice and soft and spongie in the water quickly.

As far as getting caught on the ladder I used to have that problem with my Polaris. What I did was get a couple of sections of 2" (or maybe it was 1.5" - I forget) PVC pipe and I cut out a section of the pipe longitudinally that was maybe an inch or an inch and a half wide so I could force the pvc pipe over the verticle sections of the ladder. This made it a smaller opening between the ladder edge and the pool wall so the cleaner would not get stuck in there.