Inazuma's edited Medusa's Guide for Shinigami

[Hunata]

Disclaimer
I, Hunata/Inazuma, in no way claim that this is an original guide of my own work. I have edited move names and Rank names in an effort to provide Shinigami with a well made guide. The original guide was made by Lazria_nakayami/Medusa (Forum name and WoB account name respectively) for Hollows. She has given me the okay to edit her original post. If your a Shinigami and use this guide, please, send her a thank you.

Original Guide link: https://worldofbleach-forum.rpg-board.net/t2341-medusa-s-guide-for-leveling-hollows

Hello fledglings, here I am going to outline the best practices for training.

Training in General

Before I go into the specifics of each rank, I will go ahead and suggest how training should be done overall for any rank or level.

Time Trains should only be used on Skills or Move Training. This is due to Arena and Patrols being able to train your General Stats at the desired ratio for you. Without ever having to dedicate any time training to them.

To be specific:

Melee Skill - Spirit Skill - Ressureccion Skill - Sonido Skill | Are the skills.

Strength - Endurance - Speed - Intelligence - Willpower | Are the General Stats.

When to Train What

First you should become aware that there are things called 'Gain Boosts' which come into two common forms. Boss Boost and Weekend Boost. The boss boosts become active whenever a defender boss is killed or when the Kyoto City Neutral boss is Killed. These last for 2 hours from when they are set. The weekend Boost  is set for the duration of Saturday through Sunday Server time, Promptly ending 12 am Monday.

I urge greatly that when any of these boosts are active, you set skill trains. When there is no active boost you should set move trains.

This is mostly due to your moves being the Greatest factor in your combat performance, with skills then general stats coming closely behind. If you have high skills/stats but no moves trained you may find yourself losing to someone much lower level than you due to their moves being capped and battle-ready.

Finally, even if you specialize exclusively in melee or spirit, you should always have the opposite skill in about half the value of your primary skill. This is due to the opposite skill giving you much needed defense from that particular damage type. Not to mention if you follow the rest of this guide, your opposite skill will improve your total training pace.

Through The Ranks

This part of the guide is specific to each rank that will be listed below. These suggestions may bend the rules a little bit due to having to have players get on their feet before they can make full use of the optimum training path.

Student

This is the rank that will get you familiar with the Shinigami interface. To get through this rank you simply will need to train your desired primary skill and secondary skill. It isn't absolutely required but if you want through this rank quickly, you should take the two AI spam moves below and kill as much Desert AI as possible.

Moves of the Rank

Straight Thrust (Melee) Way of Destruction 4: Blue Light Storm (Spirit)

Regardless of Rank, having one AI spam move from each skill is essential for the most efficient training. This is due to even though you may specialize in melee or spirit exclusively, you still have a lot of pools in the opposite skill that will otherwise go un-used.

Squad Member

When you enter this rank you will choose your specialization. I highly recommend going with any of the three aggressive specializations at the time of writing this guide.

Aggressive spirit - Aggressive Melee - Aggressive Balanced.

As stated before, just because you specialize in only one skill, you should always have the secondary skill trained for defensive purposes as well as training purposes.

If you do specialize in balance, note that this may require a lot more patience and training to make full optimal use of the specialization. But, in addition to more training, it is possible to also train faster if you evenly increase the potency of both your skills and moves. This is due to being able to make full use of both pools evenly, as well as regen them evenly. You will also deal roughly the same damage to AI with both skill types if you keep everything consistent.

Moves of the Rank
This is where your most important set of moves will come from in terms of defeating AI. These two moves listed below will set the pace of your training in the long run until late Rank six.

Way of Destruction 18: Green Flames (Spirit)| 6,000 spirit skill - Crushing Blow (Melee)| 6,000 melee skill

This is when you will want to start move training, however you may not immediately be able to pick up either of these moves when you rank. These two particular moves hold the highest damage to pool usage ratio of all the moves until Rank 6 where the two pure damage moves there go unrivaled.

Refer to the What to train when portion of the guide from here on out. If all of the listed moves cap you are free to train skill exclusively until you reach the next set of listed moves.

Disclaimer
From here on out my views on when to rank up vary from my peers, but my suggestion is to always cap your primary skill, take your secondary skill to half cap (If melee or spirit specialization) or both skills to cap if you are balanced. If your generals happen to cap from spamming AI before meeting the skill requirement then you may also rank.

My biggest reasoning for this is because every time you rank up, the AI will become more difficult, and ranking up immediately may slow your ability to kill these Hard AI consistently. Granted once your general stats cap, this impediment will no longer matter since you won't be able to gain anything more in your current rank anyway.

Senior Squad Member

Regardless if you decided to hold or not, the training path remains the same. In this rank more moves are added to your training list and your skill/stat caps increase.

Moves of the Rank

In this rank Boosts, resists, and heals come into play. This guide is not about explaining the uses of each one, but know they all play an important role in combat even to the last rank.

Melee moves include:
Defensive Kata (Dual Resist), Strength Enhancement (Melee Boost), Healing Energy (Melee Heal)

Spirit moves include:
Way of Binding 2: Repelling Sphere (Dual Resist), Way of Binding 6: Charged Kido (Spirit Boost), Way of Binding 17: Angelic Light (Spirit Heal)

Disclaimer
Balanced users can make full use of combining melee and spirit moves. However it is important to know that the Healing moves in particular can only be used by their primary specialization or a balanced user. Using the healing move from the opposite skill will result in a much weaker effect to the point where it isn't worth using at all.

e.g. Melee using a spirit heal will have next to no gains regardless of spirit skill. Yet a balanced user can use both freely regardless of skill amount and gain full benefit as long as it is trained.

Ranked Officer

In this rank we are only introduced to 1 important long lasting move. And that is a moving attack. If you ended up having to rank too soon before your moves completely capped, make full use of this rank to finish training your listed moves before moving on.

Beware
Once in this rank other players are free to attack you if they are in your rank as well. Invasions allow the opposite race to kill you regardless of rank. And in KC opposite race players in your rank barrier may also attack you. In this case it is R5-R6. Or Arrancars and Elite Fraccions.

Moves of the Rank

Slash Whirlwind (Melee) and Way of Destruction 49: Nova Blast (Spirit) are Pre-R7 moving attacks.

If you have no interest in holding R6 in the long term then this move is skippable.

Elite Officer

In this rank is when you want to make a long term commitment before moving on. As well as decide if you want to assist your race by stopping your training here once capped or to keep training in the new rank barrier.

Moves of the Rank

In this rank you also are introduced to several moves that hold great significance in the long run. Capping all of these moves will make you much more battle-ready in this rank and the next.

Entombing Rubble (Melee Barrier) - Sneak Slash (Melee Weakness) - Dance of Dragons (New Melee Pure damage move that replaces Rending Claw)

Way of Binding 39: Round Lock Fan (Spirit Barrier) - Way of Destruction 61: Zero Contract (Spirit Weakness) - Way of Destruction 65: Chaos Bolt (New Spirit Pure damage move that replaces Burning Roar)

Veteran Shinigami

In this rank you cut off all ties to the last two ranks player-wise, only being able to interact with them in spars or possibly invasions. You are now at the bottom of the new rank barrier and training time is increase exponentially in this rank and the next. But don't fret, keep on training consistently and not giving up will possibly result in you becoming one of our honorary Captain!

Moves of the Rank

This rank introduces several moves that may find some use to you.

Howling Wind Scar (Melee Range Nerf) - Douji's Rage (Melee Fire AoE) - Sakura Storm Dance (Melee Moving Attack) - Ophiuchus Kiss  (Melee Poison AoE)

Way of Binding 50: Thorn Chains (Spirit Range Nerf) - Way of Destruction 75: Abolishing Blaze (Spirit Fire AoE) - Flash Shunpo (Spirit moving attack) - Way of Destruction 76: Primordial (Spirit Poison AoE)

I'm not a large fan on Poison AoE, but it is still effective for what it does.

Legendary Shinigami

The final rank that boasts the highest xp ceiling in the game. As expected will take the longest out of all the ranks to train but will yield power unrivaled should you be able to seize it.

Moves of the Rank

Finally we come down to the last set of moves for this particular guide, their may be moves not listed in this guide that are worth getting, but at least with this you will at least have a base to work from.

Almost all moves in this rank are worth taking, it will be up to you to decide which to utilize. I Personally suggest taking the 5.3 Pure damage move for either skill at the very least and experiment from there.

Way of Destruction 93: Incandescent (Spirit Pure)

Great Crossing Strike (Melee Pure)

The End

That is the end of the guide, please feel free to leave any feedback, criticism or important thoughts I may have missed.