The Tavern

Nemelex in .15 is he still strong? He doesn't give decks of destruction anymore but decks of war which I never really used because if I was fighting something I wanted destruction, and war was only rare finds on the ground.

I guess I'm asking in what situations are decks of war useful, and if he is weaker than in 14.

I found her to be pretty much ... useless? I wore amulet of faith and had plenty of decks, but because deck of destruction is no longer I was unable to get use out of her for offense. I wanted arcance mayhem, not some means of escape/really random summons/minor buffs. Defense still good, lots of escape options. Ended up abandoning her at xl 20 or so. Wrath was easy to endure and getting Tombed in combat has been useful several times.
You still have to micromanage a lot and some of the unique card effects that made her fun are gone.

Edit: crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/lennard/morgue-lennard-20140812-151147.txt this is the morgue. Had hoped to use elixir/alchemist/all the other escape options to get over the vinestalker-no-heal, was disappointed, abandoned at xl 23, was really happy with Mahkleb.

She's still technically really strong. You get random conjurations and random summons, both of which are cheaper xp-wise than getting actual conjurations or summons of the same strength. Your supply of these things is functionally limitless, too. However, we already had a deity that provided random conjurations and random summons at a cheaper price than normal, and I don't think there's room in the design space for two deities that do basically the same thing.

In the end, Makhleb has a better mechanical design. Makhleb has you directly spend piety for her invocations, and you earn piety faster if you are currently missing some. If you run around with 200 piety and refuse to use your granted powers, any more piety you get is wasted. Consequently, Makhleb gameplay encourages you to use your abilities, and if you have a really tough sequence of fights to get through there's a legitimate possibility of running low. On the other hand, Nemelex currently showers you in decks, which don't directly affect your piety. Decks are a static resource that you can stockpile, so you are encouraged to avoid actually using her granted abilities since that permanently depletes your stock. On the other hand, the fact that you have a ridiculously deep stockpile means that if you do decide to use them you can use as much as you want and not run out.

So, yeah. Nemelex is strong, but Makhleb is better designed and more fun. Everything that made Nemelex distinctive in flavor has been removed.

I don't know what the plans are for her going forward. I'm still hoping for mandatory item sacrifice, where the only items that are not automatically sacrificed are the ones you pick up and keep in your inventory. No other deity plays like that, so regardless of where her power level ended up it would make for a meaningfully distinct gameplay experience.

If only Nemelex gave you an ability that let you choose from a couple different cards so you could get useful effects when you need them....

oh wait

(Nemelex is still very strong)

Koboldlord put down quite nicely what I wanted to say- before the change it was kinda possible to get conjurations without having to sort your decks if you did not mind the occasional ensuing chaos. Now if you want to have conjurations you have micromanage again. Since I strongly disliked that I wasted her possibilities- better put: probably still strong if you put effort into it.

Nemelex is even more tedious than before. Great.

My feelings about the changes to Nem are simple. Unfun, and thus not worth going with her as far as I am concerned. Even if you can still use her to win. That said, I expect there are plenty of people who derive a different sort of pleasure from the game and don't mind being bored to death in the process. And while I am certain many other players will agree with my feeling, it is probably wrong for me to try and discourage others from playing with Nem in the same way it would be wrong for people to discourage other hard but fun gods.

Sounds like I need to do my Nemelex win before I upgrade.

Too bad the vaults did not agree with that plan last week.

Ah, well... I'll start up another Gargyole Fighter and do it again. This time with better deck management. Too much escape and not enough summons and destruction did me in.

Nemelex is absolutely not more tedious than in old versions. I don't see how you can really argue that that is the case. There are fewer different decks gifted (so you use fewer inventory slots), the decks have more cards (so you use fewer inventory slots) and you no longer sacrifice items and you can no longer micromanage what gifts you get.

Personally I think 0.15 Nemelex is both better design and more fun than old versions, though probably Nemelex is weaker now (but not by as much as some people claim, imo).

If you go in expecting exactly the same god and trying to play Nemelex the same way you will be disappointed. Draw one is for when you just want something useful (very nearly all of deck of war is useful in fights in general) but don't care what you get. Triple draw is for when you want specific effects (or stack decks). There's no reason you should be looking specifically for conjurations, though. As far as I can tell in situations where conjurations would be useful, so are the other effects in deck of war, unless you're trying to do something like shoot monsters across deep water.