[sector24]

There are a lot of large high HP pretenders that don't have the kind of stats or abilities that you'd want for early expansion, nor high starting paths for a bless. Just a few examples:

Lord of War
Father of Serpents
Jade Emperor
Lord of Plenty
Lady of Fortune
Celestial General
Mother of Monsters
Lord of Rebirth
etc.

I do agree with you that the VQ is currently a far worse choice than any of these. I didn't mean to argue against your point, just provide a different perspective. If you think of the VQ as the Celestial General's smaller sneakier sister, then she just becomes another pretender that you never really use but the AI seems to choose all the time.