VL titan actually was considered to be pretty crappy near release....note I'm not saying it was crappy, but many people believed it was...

Few ever picked desperation because on the surface it didn't seem like all that good of an ability...thus, you had people micro jumping around and using phase gate spawning while abusing SttC...the strategy as a whole was good, but the titan itself was seen as basically a big brick until lvl 6....it wasn't until people got better at countering SttC (or banning it outright) that more players started picking desperation early on and noticing that it was really powerful...

Once word got out that the splash damage of desperation made it one of the best AoEs, it quickly was recognized as one of the better titans and certainly was the best when it was the only one to affect corvettes...

That at least explains the VL titan...as for the whole faction ever being weak, I don't recall that ever occurring either...IIRC, the faction has only been nerfed over time, never buffed.....