Blue mage "spells while leveling" guide?

[Shougun]

That the power level method is so prevalent and leveling the normal way is described as spell spam / boring / not a good use of time is imo one of the more major issues currently with the job (setting aside the whole limited vs normal arguments). Early spells really deserve some extra love for value/ fun, strongly imo. I leveled blue to 60 alone prior to basic instinct, did not power level, it was kind of 1 or 2 button spam for a while... basic instinct will help you a lot, but there is a power wall before some of the more exciting skills and beyond a bit of leveling revolves around healer mimicry and pom cure / gobskin (once you get those your sustain goes through the roof, and of course basic instinct but reading that tool tip should be obvious lol).

Anyway to point of thread. 1k needles (use mighty guard at same time, the spell does the same damage regardless), and basic instinct for later, then when you can get ram and dragon voice and 1k starts to fall off you can use those skills to mass murder for further levels (abuse the ice debuff as well, before combining with dragon you can get a few free attacks in the first few times at least)- which you can easily get from either relic trial, cutters cry, or the circus (circus you can't use basic instinct though). Aetheric mimicry is powerful but you will need help or to unsync it (assuming you don't have other good skills, and will be using basic instinct), once you have that and one of the heal spells (pom cure or gobskin) you can get the vast majority of other spells sub 70 without really any trouble at all. A very easy non-instance strong burst combo is tingle, whistle, then spear. Chocometeor is definitely a good one too. Bad breath on a huge group is fun. Make sure you use lucid dream to keep your mp up until you can stop relying on white wind.

Once you get a few primal spells and such you'll get to press a lot more buttons though, big damage high sustain.

[kaynide]

This came up a few weeks back; I'll copy/paste what I did there to give you a general progression plan.

Basically:

1) cheese level yourself ASAP and…
1b) Get open world spells as you can.
2) Start doing the masked carnival, some stages will require certain spells. Skip the ones you can’t do and work on getting spells needed.
3) Begin putting together a competent DPS build; sonic boom is a great single target, electro genesis is great AoE. The main reason for this is, if you do something at level (no unsync) you will 100% learn stuff…but in order to not be dead weight in a party, you need some basics.
4) Get combo spells in dungeons/open world.
4a) ram’s voice ->ultra vibration is insta death AoE with a cool down.
4b) whistle->tingle->triple trident powerful single target
5) Work on you oGCDs (mostly primals)

While doing all of that, also work on your healer set (Pom cure, gobskin is all you really need)

Eventually, you will have a basic core blue build that suits you and can do dungeons as any role (tank is not as effective with lower armor but it’s possible), but since you can save builds you can also make more specific ones for certain content.

Also, I see a lot of talk about massive final sting damage…I’ve tried it but haven’t been impressed by it yet. So if you see that and wonder “wtf am I doing wrong?” I also don’t know what’s going on there (probably my gear?)

Now, since you specifically did ask for leveling progression I assume you don't want to cheese-level: That way mostly matches the above, with a few variations:

1) You want to get a generic damaging spell (Sonic boom is ideal). Acorn Bomb (Sleep mobs if needed) and White Wind (Expensive, but "fine" healing).
2) Open up a webpage listing all the spells for BLU, and actively hunt down ones you can get in the Open World.
3) Spam-kill mobs. I still recommend cheesing this... but if you REALLY don't want to, that's really all there is. Kill whatever you can and get new spells until 50.
4) Refer to above.