It's amusing how people are justifying their back pedal by saying that it is necessary to maintain a gap against a melee. This is wrong, for the guy who was saying that most charges are 10m, an easy way to counter a bad back pedal is run the opposite direction, then charge- boy is that difficult. And as for stealth like shadow/sin or op/scoundrel....If you are playing against one of those classes and they try and chase you down, then frankly you need to realize that what you are doing isn't justification as a whole and i would go so far as to say, if the stealthy was so stupid to chase you down, considering that a lot of their big 1v1 damage comes from openers, then you should be able to beat them just as easy from just auto attacking and picking your bum.
Nuff' Said