You pose an interesting question, especially since your phrase of DNNNav is unclear. Do you mean the DNN Nav Skin Object, the DNNMenu, or the DNNMenu Navigation Provider?
The Skin object will remain a core piece of code, therefore be updated with each release of the core.
The DNNMenu Navigation Provider is also part of the core and will be updated with the release of the core, however, this one could be updated apart from the core in order to provide some preliminary testing.
The DNNMenu is part of the WebControls project and has its own release schedule, where the "latest" version is included with each DNN release.
It should be noted that standardizing on the Nav skin object, and thereby restricting the property assignments to the newly organized ones does not require you to use the DNNMenu, it will work with any nav provider including solpart, which does work with the separator properties.