Yeah, it’s definitely a bug. The behavior is not how it feels in the real thing at all. On larger helipads, GE pretty much feels the same as the tarmac at the airport. Which is where you feel the most benefit. It feels slightly less prominent over tall grass/rough surfaces.
If you cross the edge of an elevated surface at GE height, you will feel a little bit of a bump up, but not a lot, and it doesn’t come with a yaw spike. Where it’s more dangerous is crossing the edge, from the elevated pad to the drop off. You can lose enough altitude to endanger the tail rotor.
As you are approaching the edge towards the pad, the GE bubble will start to push you back from the edge as soon as the rotor disk is near the edge. It starts off as a slight push, then once about 1/3rd of the disk is over the edge the bubble pushback is strongest, then it starts to go away, or allow you to pass and you can ease off the extra forward cyclic you needed to push past it. To avoid all of this, you typically make a steeper approach to the pad center and do a max performance take off so you don’t drop off the edge.
For smaller pads like the spray trucks, the size of the pad and height really just negates GE and you need HOGE power to set down on them. The helicopter is just a little less stable, or more sensitive to cyclic input due to the disruption of the downwash inflow.
I don’t have a ton of experience with elevated pads IRL, but those are the main points we worked on when learning them.