Guild Wars 2

From a purely PVE standpoint, I feel like backbreaker would be far more useful as a leap. This would in essence make it a better form of bull’s charge, I realize, which may be bad gameplay design. The problem I see with it is the fact that it roots you for a short range move makes it only useful if you’re fighting against an opponent and spamming that move off cooldown for the sake of knocking them down.
It’s kinda obvious they wanted hammers to be a great source of CC, but I feel like the move is slightly useless when you can’t even save an ally who’s getting chased down by some enemy. Say your elementalist friend is running from some enemy and you run up to the enemy to knock them down. If the elementalist is running around and this said enemy is chasing them around, there’s no way that enemy is going to be close enough to you for the backbreaker to hit after its root time. It would also make for a bit of extra battle mobility for hammer builds.
As for PvP, I don’t know what sort of implications this would have. I suppose having another gap closer might bring bad balancing issues in that case. Feel free to offer your criticisms.

I just wish the animation was shorter.

2 seconds Knockdown sounds decent on paper, but it locks you into the animation for so long that you can barely take advantage of it. Especially bad considering how Merciless Hammer works.

Did you get Backbacker(5) mixed up with Staggering Blow(4)? Backbreaker can be used while moving. If your friend is being chased you have Hammer Shock and Earthshaker.