Intro to BLU
Have you found yourself getting tired of paying for the ever increasing costs of teleports?
Is the current endgame meta (tm) getting stale??
Fate grinding got you down?
Want that sick Morbol mount?
Well, look no further than Blue Mage! Blue mage is (as of Endwalker) the only limited job in the game. Blue mage is a limited job due to a few of the main features of the job:
Learning spells from seeing them on monsters
It is not balanced like normal jobs (and as a result is absurdly powerful)
Very solo friendly.
For more general overview, please refer to the official Final Fantasy 14 job guide for BLU mage.
If BLU is limited, what activities can it actually do
As of writing (prior to 6.45), BLU mage is currently excels at
Blue mage exclusive Carnival missions (and associated challenges)
Fate grinding
Treasure maps
Clearing older trials/raids for wonderous tails
Being a different way to experience older content
Being a lot of fun
Leveling BLU
In short, you gain experience by grinding mobs and learning spells. With a finite number of spells that you can learn, you'll spend the bulk of the time grinding mobs.
Be sure to equip all experience boosting items you have, and road to 80 and rested bonus will also apply to BLU.
How it works: Due to how blue mage works, mobs killed in the open world grant significantly increased experience when killed by BLU. Unfortunately, this means that the only feesible method to level BLU is grinding mobs around your (or slightly above) your level.
Key Spells when solo leveling
Until Level 20 - Pretty much just water cannon.
Level 20 - Learn Acorn Bomb and 1000 needles. 1000 needles does a flat 1000 damage split among all mobs affected, as it has a long cast time, start with Acorn Bomb to sleep enemies and then one shot them.
Level 40 - Enter cutter's cry and get ram's voice/Dragon's Voice. You can safely spam ram's voice on enemies until about level 50
Level 50 - Learn Choco Meteor and spam it while leveling with your chocobo. "Rotation" is mainly Ram's Voice -> Choco Meteor spam. If you can learn ultra vibration you can use ultravibration after they are frozen to instantly kill them until you reach max level.
Be sure to update your gear as you level and try to keep your item level approximately within 10 levels of your current level.
Power Leveling (Your first BLU cheese)
Requirements:
Max level companion (can be friend or found in PF). Barrier healers like SCH or SGE are preferred for safety, but any job can work.
Be able to access Kholusia
Be in separate parties from your companion (cross world party is fine, normal party is not)
Spell of choice for tagging enemies, folks often prefer Flying Sardine, as it is instant cast, but even just water cannon is totally fine.
How to cheese it
Go to the beach in Southeast Kholusia (will change in 6.45 probably)
Run around attacking enemies with your spell of choice.
Power leveling partner will kill the mobs.
You get a huge chunk of experience
Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you are your preferred level (usually level 70).the level of your choice.
Note: This only works if you are not in the same party. If you are in the same party you will get no experience.
Spell Learning
BLU mages learn spells by doing the following:
Being alive
See an enemy cast a spell to completion
Killing the enemy
Things that affect the learning rate
Number of Stars, more starts means harder to learn
Running Dungeons/Trials/Raids with level sync enabled will grant a 100% learn rate (assuming that you see the spell cast)
That is all. Nothing else affects the learn rate.
For a list of spells and where to find the mobs, you can use the following resource: