I'm a little surprised with how suddenly-comfortable a couple of you have gotten with snark just because someone is strongly positioned elsewhere than you.
However, I also think the 'Backstab is fine as is or isn't fine at all' argument has been driven into the dirt. If someone reads the thread, they'll see plenty of arguments for and against the viability of backstab as a skill in its current state.
So instead, to kind of help things out, I'll ask for a a piece at a time:
Is it catastrophic for anyone if the backstab delay were to be reduced, even if it's not to the degree of kill?
-My position is that it's far from catastrophic for this particular piece of the idea to come to be. My opinion is that it's high risk for a reason, to demonstrate that it is a maneuver that you use to achieve only the goal of what it does, which is grants a large spike of damage, hopefully to the point that they can't hide somewhere and heal without the risk taken of 'sleeping it off'. If this latter mechanic were changed dynamically, the former would become obsolete. I think it would fundamentally change the methods that make assassins truly effective, and thus kind of...allow people to not figure out that it's supposed to be used more situationally than consistently, much like any other non-warrior method of killing. But I do not think that part of it would be terrible to modify, nor even entirely make situations different aside from establishing that emphasis; that seems to be the main purpose of the delay, is to make sure you know that you should be careful using it.
-I think I have this position purely because I did indeed die with it enough times to figure out some bad cases to use it. It's not for going above your skill level on npc's; they don't run away, they'll just thwack you until they die, so before you use it on an npc, you have to be able to win the brawl anyway. It's not for going against someone you're not sure you can beat who's tromping around with weapons out, because they're already expecting trouble and to capitalize on your exposure, even if this still happens rarely and often by accident in my experience. Thus, part of it -is- the whole veteranhood thing...which I happen to be a fan of, but can understand that the current trend in game-thought is that everyone should be dying less. I have about 50 characters that lasted less than 2 days (or some other similarly significant, but estimated number).
With me holding that position, the delay is the one part where I can feel pretty -good- about giving ground on it, albeit perhaps not to the degree of kill, but at least to make it -less- risky for those testing situations where it's good or bad to use.