Danil “gpk” Skutin pulled the rabbit out of his hat for Virtus Pro late in The International 11 Last Chance Qualifier group stage.

Virtus Pro, playing their last game of the TI11 LCQ versus T1, was in danger. T1 had snowballed into a big lead off the back of Anathan “ana” Pham’s and Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen farmed Phantom Assassin and Invoker, respectively. Meanwhile, their midlaner was in trouble well into the mid-game.

Gpk had a rough start early on, constantly getting targeted due to her squishy nature and lack of defensive items like Black King Bar. But she endured T1’s barrage to show the hero’s worth as a spellcaster—and Lina’s new Aghanim’s Scepter was what made it possible.



Gpk goes unorthodox Aghanim’s Scepter build to secure important victory

GPK back when he was part of Gambit
Credit: Gosugamers

The upgrade now provides Lina with a new ability called Flame Cloak, which grants the hero unobstructed movement and increased spell amplification whenever she activates it. Though some have experimented with this build, the hero still seems to be played mostly as a midlane dominator that can scale into a hard-hitting right-click carry.

Gpk, however, committed fully to the magical item build, even picking up a Glimmer Cape to ensure that he could position himself properly in the fight. It paid off in a massive Roshan pit fight, where gpk was able to cast spells across the entire screen to take down Anathan “ana” Pham’s Phantom Assassin.



The 21-year-old more than repaid the favor to ana down the line. Later in the game, he hunted down the Phantom Assassin on the top lane, using some quick spellcasting to completely destroy ana—and turn the tides permanently in VP’s favor.



Now that the fear of Lina was firmly put into ana, VP methodically rolled down each lane to claim their objectives. T1 put up valiant teamfights effort, but gpk was fully online. The Southeast Asian team was unable to get past the bevy of meatshields like Chaos Knight, Timbersaw, and Tiny to get to gpk, who had free rein to cast spells over and over again.



The win was a crucial one for VP, who had already lost to T1 in the first game of the series.

A victory in game two meant that they avoided any possible tiebreakers with T1 or Wildcard Gaming, instead confirming their upper bracket berth in the Last Chance Qualifier playoffs.

VP will now play against Vici Gaming in the upper bracket quarterfinals tomorrow, 1 p.m. GMT +8.

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