Silent replaces Illidan on Virtus.Pro

Virtus.Pro have dropped Ilya 'Illidan' Pevcaev from their roster and will be adding Empire's carry player, Ayrat 'Silent' Gaziev.

In just under a week, teams are expected to have registered their roster for the Shanghai Major; it was recently revealed on Virtus.Pro's website that Empire's carry Ayrat 'Silent' Gaziev will be joining them in place of their current carry, Ilya 'Illidan' Pevcaev. If it is true that Gleb 'Funn1k' Lipatnikov is joining Empire, the departure of Silent will leave Empire with one open slot to fill before the roster lock date of 8 December.

Statement by Virtus.Pro's manager

“

After a quite successful International 2015 our roster started to stagnate, and 5th-6th place became a stumbling-block for us. After poor Major for us, our team made a hard decision and took a risk by changing one of our core players.
Airat [Silent] is one of the most experienced players in the CIS-community and he has proved that he is one of the best carry players in the world. I sincerely hope that Silent becomes an essential part of the Virtus.pro Dota roster and our results will improve.”

Current Virtus.Pro roster:
Ayrat 'Silent' Gaziev
Sergey 'God' Bragin
Alexandr 'DKPhobos' Kucherya
Ilya 'Lil-_-HaRDy' Ilyuk
Artsiom 'FNG' Barshak

Empire's current situation is unclear. An interview conducted with Reso1ution at the Global eSports Cup revealed that he is of the understanding that Silent did not attend the event due to family issues and both Funn1k and Alexander "XBOCT" Dashkevich are only stand-ins for the tournament. Empire has yet to comment on the state of events.

The interview can be watched below: