Because you need to know how to project it into a barrier?
Some mages learn that spell, but not all. For example, you could argue kayle does this WAY better with her ult.
As far as Blitz is concerned, he was a robot designed by zaun to clean up their toxic waste in situations that was too dangerous for a Zaunite to survive in. He was built with the capacity to adapt to and learn from his surroundings. It would make sense in dangerous areas that he would learn to use his mana-battery to throw up a barrier to protect himself in times of need. It also makes sense that since it was an emergency measure, it would just do a base calculation off of how much juice is left in the mana battery, and convert a portion of that into the barrier.