Yeah... the three skills I'm most disappointed in are Animal Handling, Performance, and Sleight of Hand.
Like as has been said... when you have Nature and Survival, do you really need Animal Handling? Is it truly necessary? Will it ever get used enough to warrant being its own skill? Unless you have lots of horse and carriage chases, I just don't see it.
Then merge them for your game. In my circles, spitting them up was a good thing
And Sleight of Hand (or Fine Motor Skills or whatever you want to imply with it) has always been the red-headed stepchild of thievery skills except in 4E when they wisely merged pickpocketing with opening locks & disarming traps as the Thievery skill.
No thanks. Again, I like it as a its own skill and despised the merging in 4e. I can think of numerous roguish concepts that deserve to have the split as well as for non rogues with one or the other.
All that says is something about how you run your game rather than the need for them to be split. The groups that I know get enough usage for them to be split and splitting them is seen as a plus.Pickpocketing at least in my games has never warranted its own skill because it is so rarely used. So to split it off from Open Locks and Disarm Traps again (IE the "Thieves Tools" proficiency) is a waste