Merchant

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Description
The Merchant is a full support based hero with many global skills. The primary skill of a Merchant makes everything cost less. This includes Units, Skills, Buildings, Titans etc.

Wealth provides lots of gold and is accessible at an early level.

Trade allows you to get a better deal with the Trade ability at various markets and hostels.

Lastly, Gemcutting is available for any races that require it but is only accessible much later on.

Stats and Skills
The attribute changes you get by choosing this class:

The abilities you get by choosing this class:

Overall
The skills a Merchant bears work extremely well with the Charisma stat to create an unstoppable army spawning machine which if not stopped quickly, will easily be able to steamroll across the entire map. Even a super Warrior hero will be defeated eventually. However, not all races are compatible with the Merchant. Pair it up with the right race though, and you've got yourself one of the most powerful classes in the game.

Races
There are multiple races the Merchant works well with, but the foremost which come to mine are the Empire and the Fey. There should be pretty much no stat point invested that hasn't been invested in Charisma.

The Empire requires huge amounts of gold, all the time. The Mercenary costs nothing but gold and produces instantly. With the combination of Wealth and this instantly production, the Empire Merchant can produce hundreds of cheap Mercenaries every few minutes. Gemcutting is almost pointless to an Empire Merchant, and Trade is negligible. Keep the Merchant away from trouble, and it should be one of the easiest race/class combinations to play.

Secondly, the Fey are another race that pairs extremely well with the Merchant class. At a high enough level, a Fey Merchant is able to continuously upgrade the Dreamhold all the way to level 5 with no breaks. A Fey Merchant combined with the five resource upgrades AND access to mine fillers in Oakmen means that the Fey quickly become an enormous mass that can't be stopped whatsoever.

Knight and Dwarves work well with Merchant because their economy requiest a lot of gold and both have access to trade and income upgrades.

Counters

 * The number one counter to a Merchant is an early assault. At this time, the Merchant is unlikely to have solidified their defences or economy. In particular, an early assault rampaging after the Merchant hero may end the game quite quickly for the Merchant player.
 * Assassins, Dark Riders, Gnolls, Assassin heroes or Bard heroes have a great opportunity to remove the Merchant problem before it begins.