For me it's breaking the tips off the legs. I never lifted a single pad, but those legs were too easy to break.
I’ve only ever snapped off one Alps lead... I desoldered a Cherry MX board and snapped off several though. (First, the MX switches have flimsier leads, and second, lead-free solder is awful.)
If the leads are bent over and stuck down, what I do is, for every bent lead on the board: (a) use the soldapullt as usual pulling most of the solder out of the hole, (b) apply heat and pull up on the lead with a little metal dental pick [these are super useful general-purpose tools], until it comes free of the pad, (c) unbend the lead using some snipe-nosed pliers. Then after that, I take the PCB off, and only then try to push any switches out of the plate, making sure to push down the little plastic “wings” so they don’t break.