Suranui over at VG Ten Ton Hammer has a Blood Mage Creation Guide for those who want to check out this interesting healer class:

The Blood Mage is the most arcane and unique of the healer classes. The Blood Mage can heal in a number of ways and has a large variety of spells. The Blood Mage spell list includes healing spells, life taps, direct damage spells, buffs, and symbiotes. In addition to these spells, they have forms, which allow them to adapt effectively to a variety of situations, and they can draw extra power by bonding with an enemy, creating a Blood Union. This union can be used to enhance the potency of their spells, or be focused into a powerful damage or healing spell. The Blood Mage abilities are focused around using her blood and her enemy¡¯s blood for her and her ally¡¯s benefit.

Wisdom, vitality, and intelligence are the Blood Mage?s primary attributes. Wisdom gives the Blood Mage a large pool of energy to cast healing spells. Vitality provides a bonus to healing spells. Intelligence makes it harder for enemies to counter a Blood Mage?s heals and allows the Blood Mage to do more damage with spells of his own. Dexterity could be a good choice for Blood Mages who use bonds with defensive fighters to share their damage.

Building a good Blood Mage takes some careful planning at the character creation screen and requires you to learn a handful of tactics in the lower levels.

Selecting the Right Race

Blood Mages of all races start with the same attributes, but the choice of race can affect how many points the Blood Mage automatically gets placed into its prime attributes.

Starting attributes:

STR	CON	DEX	VIT	INT	WIS
25	30	25	35	45	50

Each character gets 20 attribute points (AP) per level, starting at level 10. 6 of your AP are placed for you automatically–one per attribute (STR, CON, DEX, VIT, INT, WIS). 4 points are assigned to attributes based on your race if you are not a human (humans are kojani, mordebi, qaliathari, and thestran). You can place 10 (14 for humans) wherever you want to within soft caps of 5 per level.
Additionally, characters get racial bonuses to their soft caps. These are called preferred stats and allow characters of a race to flesh out in a way that reflects the traits of the race. Non-human races get 4 bonus points to soft caps (usually two or three attributes only) while human races get 6, 1 for each attribute. Thus, a human can be more balanced, while a non-human becomes more specialized.

The table below shows the attribute scores at level 50 before gear and buffs for the Blood Mage based on the race selected. We?ve highlighted the best results for each of the primary attributes for you. It is possible to reach the soft cap for three attributes as a human, but those soft caps may be lower than those attainable by other races.

Racial Abilities

The other important factor to consider when picking the race for your Blood Mage is racial abilities. With their short durations and long recasts, racial abilities are less important than attributes in the selection process, but they can be used to pick between races that are otherwise equal. The racial abilities are listed below.

Thestran: Inspirational Commands
You will have 3 inspirational commands at your disposal: Inspirational Presence, Inspirational Wisdom, and Inspirational Tactics. Each command is a group buff that will add either 2% to mitigation, a 3% reduction to mana cost of all spells, or a 2% increase in damage. You may only maintain one command at a time, however you may have all 3 effects active at the same time. Recast is instant.

Human Ingenuity: + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge.
Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

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High Elf: Arcane Balance
This ability will take the cumulative amount of mana in a group, add 25% to that number, and evenly redistribute it to all members. Recast is 15 minutes.

Elven Wisdom: 2% reduction in mana cost
Crafting: +10 Reasoning
Harvesting: +5 Reaping

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Kojani: Spirit of Jin
This ability will immediately restore 45% of energy and hit points to the target. This ability has a diminishing effect on any target that has benefitted from this ability (used by another player) in the last 10 minutes. Recast is 30 minutes.

Human Ingenuity + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge.
Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

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Goblin: Hex of Ghalnn
Whoever is afflicted by this hex will return 3% of the mana and hit points for every hit that is made on them. The effect lasts for 60 seconds. Recast is 15 minutes.

Small Race: 2% bonus to evasion
Crafting: +10 Reasoning
Harvesting: +5 Mining

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Half Elf: Symbol of Jin
This ability will apply a rune to every member of the group for 60 seconds, which will mitigate damage by 15%. Recast is 30 minutes.

Human Ingenuity: + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge.
Crafting: +10 Finesse
Harvesting: +5 Skinning

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Qaliathari: Swiftness of the Sands
For this next 10 seconds, you will evade all melee attacks and spells. Recast is 30 minutes.

Human Ingenuity + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge.
Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

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Dark Elf: Spawn of Haelufir
This ability allows you to summon forth a small drake for a short duration. The type of drake you summon will be based on class and level. Each type of drake will have a variety of effects at their disposal, ranging from group auras, to breath attacks. The higher level drakes will also learn spells that are sympathetic with their associated class. Recast is 30 minutes.

Elven Wisdom: 2% reduction in mana cost
Crafting: +10 Finesse
Harvesting: +5 Skinning

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Gnome: Forge Crystal
This ability allows you to operate a variety of devices, only available to gnomes, which are able to materialize a energy crystals. Crystals will have several common effects, ranging from percentage based mana, health, and endurance heals to several uncommon, rare, and even ultra rare effects such as prismatic group resist buffs, rune and damage shields, minion summons, and more.

Small Race: 2% bonus to evasion
Crafting: +10 Problem Solving
Harvesting: +5 Mining

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Level 1-10 Tactics

Level 1
At level one you start out with two spells, a heal and a nuke. Chain cast your nuke to burn enemies down, you won?t be using the heal spell much unless you try to get overconfident and pull multiple mobs.

Level 2
You gain the spell Union of Blood. At this level, it?s good to familiarize yourself with the Blood Union system. “Blood Union” shows up as 5 dots in a semi-circle that appear just to the left of the enemies target information (in the top right corner of the screen if you?re using the default user interface). As you cast spells that gain blood union, you?ll notice the dots fill with red. Once you get 3 blood union, casting Bursting Cyst will allow you to not only do direct damage, but it will leave a damage over time effect with additional damage, increasing your DPS. Union of Blood itself is a DoT spell that adds 2 blood union. This is useful for “union buffering”, in which you quickly try to gain a large amount of blood union for other purposes. The best strategy for the next 2 levels is to pull with bursting cyst, then immediately cast blood union, then cast bursting cyst again, then melee the rest of the fight to gain some melee and defensive skill points. If you get bored, finish the job with a nuke. You can easily take mobs 1 level above you at this point.

Level 4
Once you?re level 4, you?ll see a big jump in your soloing power. You gain serak?s mantle, which is a great AC buff, and health graft, to increase your health pool. Make sure you maintain these two great buffs at all time. The third spell you gain is Despoil. This is your first lifetap, and the key thing to remember here is it is SELF ONLY. You should still have no problem doing the quests in your newbie zone, with minimal downtime (5 to 10 seconds between kills). These will quickly take you to level 6, where things will start to slow down a bit. This will be your first introduction to lifetapping and timing. The key to this is that you get more % health back from your lifetap, if you have more blood union stored, so the trick is to avoid lifetapping unless you have 4 or 5 BU (unless you must do it to stay alive). This will maximize the Health you get per tap, and minimize energy inefficiency. Although easy at this stage, this timing will become critical if you are to master the later techniques.

Level 6
Level 6 is a great level for the blood mage, as you receive the three spells that will define the play styles that you alternate between. This is also your first step into crowd control. If you are grouping or soloing, get used to pulling with root if you are afraid you?ll get an add. That way you can fight only one mob at a time, and if you don?t get an add, you can just chain nuke to break root and get a head start on the damage. Without further delay, your introduction to Techiniques:

The Root Rot Classic
The first of the three spells is constrict, which roots an enemy for 30 seconds, and has a 60% chance to break whenever you deal damage to the enemy. For this strategy, it?s best to nuke twice, then constrict. Run off a good distance, then nuke twice, and root again. DoTs can get you in trouble here as they will break root, so be careful once the bursting cyst DoT effect triggers. This is probably the least effective soloing method, and it gets boring very quickly. It also becomes a bit more difficult at higher levels, but remains the second safest form of exp (next to standing back and healing for a party).

The Prime Healer
You can begin to group now in the local dungeon or field around your city, fighting level 7-9 mobs. Blood Gift I steals a bit of your own health and energy to grant a very powerful heal to an ally (Note, this spell can NOT be used on yourself). Groups gain fast exp, and get interesting loot through group only quests and named mobs (mini-bosses). If healing from a safe distance isn?t your thing, this could become a boring play style, so we have alternatives.

In The Fray
This was my primary strategy as a soloist (or if you?re grouping with other healers, and end up doing the primary damage). The key to this strategy is to maximize blood union, because the last two spells you get at level 6 are meant to increase your damage. Bursting Cyst II is a nice upgrade, but your “holy hand grenade” of damage, if you will, is Scarlet Ritual I. This skill expends 4 blood union points, and does a high damage nuke for 0 energy and 0 health cost! That?s as close to free damage as you can get! The typical strategy with The Fray type soloist is to maximize blood union, tap life back while you have near max BU so you?re full on health, burn scarlet ritual, and begin stacking BU again. This will unleash a merciless amount of damage (as a healing class) and if in a group, quickly gain you aggro. Here?s the works:

Burning Cyst II -> Union of Blood -> Burning Cyst II (activates DoT component) -> Despoil I -> Scarlet Ritual -> Repeat

This is a key technique to mastering if you want to become very efficient as a soloist or dualist (a technique mentioned in the strategy guide on the BM forums), because you will be adding more steps, and very timing intensive steps at that, as you grow stronger. Fighting 3-dot enemies your level, or level + 1 two-dot enemies should grind you to level 8 rather quickly if you get this down to an art. Solo Quests are great at this time for gearing up a little.

Level 8
At level 8, the truly unique aspects of the blood mage start to emerge in many forms. Take the next two levels to really adjust to the MANY powerful combinations of abilities you are given. At level 8 you gain your first of two forms, the Sanguine form. This form increases healing effectiveness by 25%, damage mitigation by 15%, and gives you a small boost in health regeneration, whilst decreasing your spell damage by 50% and the effect of heals that are cast on you by 50%. This is very useful when playing the prime healer in a group, and even more so if you are a Fray-type fighter. This may not seem like an obvious benefit at first, but as you play around with the skill, you will find many different utilities for it, so create your own unique play style! For spoilers, there are in-depth strategies on the forums. The next spells you obtain are Infuse Health II, which is your next heal, rather straightforward in usage, and Vitalize, your first vitality buff. Remember, always remain fully buffed, or mobs will start putting a heavy hurting on you. Level 8 introduces the key to the blood mage : Siphon Blood and Mental Transmutation. Siphon Blood takes 25% of your life to form a vial of blood. The vial of blood can be used at later levels in spells that use symbiotes (explained in the full-guide on the forums), and for the spell life husk, which you also gain at level 8. This spell, although on a 5 minute cooldown will often save your life. Whenever you get a resist you weren?t expecting, pull an add, or just need to buy time for another heal, life husk will grant you 6 seconds in invulnerability, and it will also reflect 10% of the damage that would normally have been dealt to you back to the target. now for mental transmutation… Using this spell, you can solo some very difficult mobs, and never run oom, even if the fight is very long, but it will take practice.
The best order is to take the Fray technique and modify it a bit:

Bursting Cyst II -> Union of Blood -> Bursting Cyst II (for DoT effect) -> Despoil -> Scarlet Ritual -> Bursting Cyst II -> Union of Blood -> Despoil -> (now you may be low on energy) so quickly switch to sanguine form, while you?re in combat, and immediately hit mental transmutation. Stay in sanguine form for a bit longer until you are near 50% health or if you are brave, you can transmute again, then switch out to your unfocused form, and immediately Despoil to catch up your HP (or heal yourself if you are more of a vitality build than Int), then cast despoil again, or nuke again to maximize your blood union and blast them with scarlet ritual again. Repeat this process, Always Despoiling if you get down to 40%. If at anytime you get very very low on energy, heal yourself then go to sanguine form and transmute. Form back to unfocused mode when you heal yourself again so you don?t take the healing penalty, then go right back into sanguine form, so you?re getting the benefits of added regeneration and mitigation. This technique should last you well up to 14 and beyond, other spells will add more to this process. Master your timing in these levels, as the enemies will get considerably stronger after 11 !

Level 10
Finally, you have become quite a force to be reckoned with, but this is just the beginning of your true potential. Level 10 offers you many spells to give you a diversified role as support in a group. It also offers you your other form, Focus of Gelenia, which increases your damage by 25%, and cleanses you of poison/disease dots every 5 seconds, however it drains 5% of your health every 5 seconds, and decreases the effectiveness of heals cast on you by 50%. It is a very powerful tool while soloing. Awaken is your resurrect spell which can only be used out of combat, so keep it handing when adventuring anywhere! Summon sanguine shard allows you to expend a bit of your life and energy to give a shard to your defensive target, that will allow them to resurrect you or another blood mage if they die. Union of Blood II increases your DoT damage potential. Four new spell lines come into play at level 10 that will play a major role in how you build your stats. Those wanting to focus on vitality (healing effectiveness) will get great bonuses from Flesh Mender?s Ritual I, which requires 3 blood union to heal a player for 1100 health over 20 seconds. Entwining vein is for those Intelligence builds who want to deal damage. It drains the life you take from the enemy and gives it directly to your defensive target, basically like a redirected lieftap. Dissolve is a useful spell for all players, as it is your first counterspell. To use it, you will see the spell above your 6th hot key slot (on the default UI) with a chain on the bottom of the icon. Whenever an enemy casts a spell and you successfully identify it (a message will let you know). The icon will light up and you will have a chance to click the spell to nullify the enemy?s cast. The final spell you get is Blood Tribute I. It is a damage spell that drains life and heals the group with it, however it is part of a combo chain. It activates, as far as we know, randomly, so you must be able to quickly react to it. The chain will appear as a set of crossed swords above your players head, and the icon will light up. It must be used as the next spell you cast, and must be used within 5 seconds, or the opportunity fades.

Best of luck with your blood mage in the future levels!