In the discussion of rewarding or ranking elite players in League of Legends, the point “yes, but the other guy’s team is worse” is sure to arise. This criticism has been lobbed against several well-known LoL professionals, including Ming “clearlove” Kai and members of SK Telecom T1 not named Lee "Faker" Sanghyeok, but the most notorious western example is undoubtedly Martin “Rekkles” Larsson. Rekkles has been attached to the Fnatic brand for the most successful periods of his career, sharing teams with decorated solo laners like Paul “sOAZ” Boyer, Enrique "xPeke" Cedeño Martínez, Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten, and Heo “Huni” Seunghoon, and it's constantly been used against him.

Leading up to Fnatic's quarterfinal series against H2k-Gaming, Rekkles’ star-studded rosters have once again been raised as criticism. When Konstantinos “FORG1VEN” Tzortziou first joked that he wouldn’t appear in the quarterfinals, Rekkles initially commented that that was a good thing. When the news became official that FORG1VEN would in fact play, H2K’s now substitute AD carry, Aleš "Freeze" Kněžínek started the EU banter.

Sad I m not able to play vs fnc but will be fun seeing rekkles hug tower like it's his mother's breast — Freeze (@FreezeLoL) August 11, 2016

When Rekkles responded with screenshots of his accomplishments, it eventually prompted FORG1VEN to weigh in. His opinion on the matter was that waving accomplishments in Freeze’s face was meaningless, as Rekkles has hardly been considered the best player on his various rosters, whereas he and Freeze have been the best players on significantly worse teams.

Known for it, at least until now. I would really love to see the scandinavian wonderboys going through elohell teams like their counteparts — FORG1VEN (@FORG1VENGRE) August 11, 2016

Banter aside, Rekkles is an incredibly unique case. The narrative around him has grown so heavy that it’s, at times, difficult to classify him as a player separate from it. I’ve personally been incredibly critical of him in the past, but this split, when I reviewed Rekkles’ games, I saw more evidence of a different kind of player. When I submitted my ballot for the EU LCS' best AD carry award, I placed Rekkles third, and it wasn’t because I think the rest of his team is bad — though I sometimes think people believe that that's a necessary pre-requisite for a player to gain accolades.

For several reasons, it’s easier for an individual player to stand out on a team that’s performing poorly, especially when that player is a carry. Seeing the contributions of players on teams where the gold is snowballed heavily becomes more difficult, as the top teams also tend to function more as a unit. One player can take a step back to allow another to get a kill or create a play with peel that makes his carry look better than him. Another player may do a ridiculous amount of damage, belying the fact that his teammate baited, performed a clutch combo, used his flash judiciously, and avoided death to create an opening. Great teams in League of Legends are beautiful to watch simply because you can’t tell.

Exceptional carries on bad teams can stand out in ways that also damage a team’s chances of winning, but they equally go unnoticed. For example, they can take extra risks, baiting teammates into dying while they clean up fights due to their faster reactions, but that usually results in an inability to take objectives after the fact. Similarly, if a player feels particularly pressured to carry, he might tunnel on farming, ignoring opportunities to have smaller impacts on the game that could help his team win the game.

But you can notice these factors, you just have to actually look for them. A more casual eye — note, I don’t mean a casual viewer, but a viewer whose attention isn’t fully fixated on a particular moment or a viewer who doesn’t back up on a VOD to catch something that may have been missed — won’t catch these things. But when one rates a player, the small details matter. LoL doesn’t make it impossible to tell what impact a player has on his team’s chances of winning, just harder, and most judgments, even with well conveyed criteria, won’t be perfect.

Even with that backdrop, Rekkles’ history is incredibly unique. Not only is Rekkles one of the most iconic players on the most renowned European League of Legends teams, but he was the first European AD carry in the game’s history that managed to be in the conversation of the elite players at his position. Because of that, I think people liked to say things like "Rekkles just looks good because there's no competition in Europe." That still follows him around.

Rekkles genuinely impressed audiences at IPL 5 with an ability to execute individual plays, making the final against a dominant WE. When he couldn’t join the EU LCS in 2013 due to age restrictions, he became the Copenhagen Wolves' stand-in carry. Those still watching him eagerly anticipated the day he turned 17 and could join the EU LCS in 2014, and his early matches inspired the term “Rekking Ball” as he and Bora “YellOwStaR” Kim dominated the laning phase.

Excitement surrounding Rekkles slowly died down. In the 2014 EU LCS Summer Split, Fnatic struggled in the regular season while vision and lane swap play adapted, emphasizing more roaming play. Because of this, Fnatic had less of an aggressive bottom lane and Rekkles slowly transformed into a player who played safe in order to clean up teamfights. Fans still adored Rekkles at the 2014 World Championship, but the young AD carry only had game-controlling showings on Lucian. Critics compiled evidence that he consistently did less damage than either Samsung Blue’s Kim “deft” Hyukkyu or Guo “san” Junliang, even in the game Fnatic famously won against Samsung Blue.

These criticisms continued into 2015, when Rekkles temporarily left Fnatic for Elements, citing motivational problems with his previous team. Elements' abysmal play in the regular season drew even more attention to Rekkles. Compared to both xPeke on Fnatic and Henrik “Froggen” Hansen, Rekkles did less of his team’s damage and only when he returned to Fnatic for the 2015 EU LCS Summer Split did he start to look impressive again.

After reviewing Rekkles’ games, it's clear that Rekkles' time with Elements' started to transform him. Froggen will always deal more damage than his AD carries because he tends to play scaling mid laners that maximize late game damage with area of effect spells or champions like AP Kog’Maw that do a great deal of consistent damage. In some ways, Rekkles became an AD carry analogy for Froggen. Elements' major missteps stemmed from minimal early game pressure and communication. They played like solo queue players with separated lanes, farming on their own and waiting to group after turrets fell.

This period, combined with YellOwStaR becoming more of a roaming support in 2014, likely formed a lot of Rekkles' AD carry style. Rekkles plays like the intelligent player who carefully minimizes early game risk to an extent that cripples his laning phase — or at least makes it harder for him to get major advantages in the first 10 minutes. His lack of pressure is obvious, but he still ekes out tiny CS advantages, because even if he and YellOwStaR don’t engage trades, he’ll naturally last hit more often or Fnatic will come out ahead in lane swaps.

Likely my most self-parroted criticism of 2016 is that Febiven, Rekkles, and Lee “Spirit” Dayoon make a terrible combination without a top laner that exerts a lot of pressure. All three of them would rather farm the early game than engage in skirmishes or trades, which has made it harder for them to get to the late game.

When they do get to the late game, Rekkles is a star. His 30.6 percent of team damage is accomplished on primarily scaling champions with a support who has traditionally been much more engage focused, and a top laner that's difficult to rely on simply because Fnatic have had three different ones this split. Rekkles' most successful champion has been Ezreal because Ezreal can scale to deal late game damage and rely on himself to position in fights.

The upsides and downsides to this are also clear. Rekkles isn’t used to getting into the thick of teamfights to maximize his damage. There have been games where his awkward positioning gets him caught out, as seen in Fnatic's Week 6 Game 2 match against the Unicorns of Love where he died repeatedly and lost his team their lead. There’s a reason he still isn’t Zven, the EU LCS' best AD carry.

But Rekkles' impact is still significant. Next time Fnatic enter a close late game teamfight, count his autoattacks and compare them to his opponents’. Then watch the fight again. Find YellOwStaR and Spirit. Is YellOwStaR peeling or engaging? Is Spirit in the fog of war looking for a gank? More often than not, you’ll be impressed. Rekkles is actually a player who has improved in a specified dimension over the course of his career.

Of course, his laning phase still leaves much to be desired. I recently asked two top laners, Splyce's Martin "Wunder" Hansen, I May's Shek "AmazingJ" Wai Ho, what factors they consider in rating their opponents.

“It's pretty important to rate them on a consistent level,” Wunder said. “Of course you can be good in lane, but you can also never group with your team or team fight properly, but I think laning is the most important when you rate a player because, if you rate a player, you don't really know what's going on with the team like with communication and such. It's a lot easier to rate a player on lane.”

Similarly, AmazingJ also considers laning, specifically CSing, important in his assessments.

“The main factors include how this top laner's laning phase is, how many CS he gets, and how he initiates in team fights,” he said.

This tends to be incredibly common among pro players, and FORG1VEN himself has said that’s the factor he most considers. When they speak highly of their peers, the laning phase is a massive factor because that’s the most exposure they get to their opponents specifically. As spectators, we aren’t laning against anyone, our exposure to a single player is in what we choose to focus on during the course of the game, and holistically speaking, as much as I respect Spirit as a player, if I had to choose a Fnatic player with the most impact as a carry at the moment, I’d edge Rekkles over him.

Spanning the course of his career, Rekkles hasn’t always been a top European AD carry, and at times he got far more credit than he deserved. There’s truth to FORG1VEN’s statement that Rekkles has gotten accomplishments due to a higher degree of teamwork and focus with his peers. Sometimes, strong players breed strong teammates. If work ethic is infectious, or a positive environment motivates players to learn more about their role, then you can have teams with multiple players near the top of their role. While most of his teammates say positive things about Rekkles' dedication, it's hard to consider Rekkles a top AD carry throughout the course of his entire career.

This split, FORG1VEN didn’t play in the EU LCS for most of the summer, and Freeze’s own teamfighting as well has his laning presence, weren’t on par with Rekkles’ despite their teams ending in similar places in the rankings. While I’ve rated FORG1VEN and Freeze above Rekkles in the past, this split saw Rekkles end up on my Top 3 EU LCS AD carries list while H2K’s AD carries didn't make the cut. Even though FORG1VEN may well outperform Rekkles this weekend, he didn't have the split Rekkles had, and neither did Freeze.

FORG1VEN also hasn’t just had “elohell” teams over the course of his career. Both SK Gaming and H2k-Gaming’s lineups were highly anticipated, and FORG1VEN still didn’t win a playoffs series with them. In fact, FORG1VEN had the distinct opportunity of proving to the “Scandinavian wonderboys” that it isn’t so hard to be them when he joined Origen. Though Origen lost Zven and Alfonso "mithy" Aguirre Rodriguez, a player I considered casting my vote Summer MVP vote for, they were still an EU LCS 2016 Spring finalist. Despite their rough start, Origen were still a team comprised of players who had made it further in EU playoffs than FORG1VEN ever had.

But instead of trying to start the initial struggle of building Origen back up with the loss of their bottom lane and putting in the effort sOAZ said he and other members of Origen contributed to make up for initial setbacks, FORG1VEN balked. He took a break and only came back for the last week of the regular season on a completely different team that were already headed for the playoffs.

If Rekkles wants to show off his accomplishments on Fnatic, just this once, FORG1VEN should at least acknowledge that being a good teammate is something he seems to find particularly difficult.

Kelsey Moser is a staff writer for theScore esports. You can follow her on Twitter.