It's a good tool to have if you hand-hold the camera a lot. I don't own any of Nikon's VR lenses but have used their 80-400. I have a shot I did with it handheld at 400mm and about an 1/8 of a second, panning rowers in a race. It did as good of a job as if I would have set up a tripod, leveled the legs, then leveled the camera on top of that.

I think I'd always choose a fast lens over VR/IS if I had the choice though - but having both is the best of both worlds.