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Omen of Clarity
Published on July 18, 2008 by Phaelia 
Analysis, Featured, Lunar Guidance, Spells and Talents 
22 Comments
Many Restoration Druids probably remember speccing into Omen of Clarity at one point or another while leveling (unless you happened to read about how worthless it was). It has traditionally been considered an ability that’s more useful to Ferals who rely on melee than to Moonkin or Resto Druids. However, with the recent changes in the beta for Wrath of the Lich King, this may all be changing:
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As you can see, Omen of Clarity will now equally benefit Druids of all specs who opt to drop a point into it. It’s so good, in fact, that I suspect it will become a core ability to all three specs. Interestingly, they’re doubling the proc rate from 3% to 6% but simultaneously adding a 10 second internal cooldown. As long as your casting frequency is greater than 1/sec, this is at minimum a 0.75% increase in proc frequency.
Expected Proc Rate
We know that the formula for the proc rate of something with an internal cooldown can be expressed as:
PPM = 60 / ((casting frequency/proc rate) + internal cooldown)
Applying this to the new values for Omen of Clarity, our formula will look like this:
PPM = 60 / ((casting frequency/0.06) + 10)
Applying this formula across a wide range of reasonable cast speeds, we find the following PPM:
| CF | PPM | CF | PPM | CF | PPM | CF | PPM |
| 1.0* | 2.25 | 1.25 | 1.95 | 1.5 | 1.71 | 1.75 | 1.53 |
| 2.0 | 1.38 | 2.25 | 1.26 | 2.5 | 1.16 | 2.75 | 1.07 |
| 3.0 | 1.00 | 3.25 | 0.94 | 3.5 | 0.88 | 3.75 | 0.83 |
| 4.0 | 0.78 | 4.25 | 0.74 | 4.5 | 0.71 | 4.75 | 0.67 |
| 5.0 | 0.64 | 5.25 | 0.62 | 5.5 | 0.59 | 5.75 | 0.57 |
| 6.0 | 0.55 | 6.25 | 0.53 | 6.5 | 0.51 | 6.75 | 0.49 |
* A cast speed of 1.0 is only possible while chain-casting Lifebloom with 5/5 Gift of the Earthmother and 0 latency. It’s really just included to make the table look pretty.
MP5 Value
As we would expect, Omen of Clarity will proc fewer times per minute as we cast fewer spells that can cause it to proc. Logically, it makes sense to use these “free” spell casts on one of our most expensive spells. Although Healing Touch (Rank 15) costs 1400 Mana, a more convenient and useful choice will probably be Flourish:
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At 1125 mana and a seven 7 duration, Flourish appears tailor-made to fit into our Lifebloom rotation. If we assume it’s used while in Tree of Life (and there will be virtually no reason not to use Tree of Life anymore), it costs 900 mana. We can use this number to determine the average MP5 value of Omen of Clarity using the following formula:
MP5 = (PPM * Mana Cost) / 12
If you were to cast a Flourish every time Omen of Clarity procs, OOC would be worth the following MP5:
| CF | MP5 | CF | MP5 | CF | MP5 | CF | MP5 |
| 1.0 | 169 | 1.25 | 146 | 1.5 | 129 | 1.75 | 115 |
| 2.0 | 104 | 2.25 | 95 | 2.5 | 87 | 2.75 | 81 |
| 3.0 | 75 | 3.25 | 70 | 3.5 | 66 | 3.75 | 62 |
| 4.0 | 59 | 4.25 | 56 | 4.5 | 53 | 4.75 | 50 |
| 5.0 | 48 | 5.25 | 46 | 5.5 | 44 | 5.75 | 43 |
| 6.0 | 41 | 6.25 | 39 | 6.5 | 38 | 6.75 | 37 |
If, however, instead of using a Flourish (which may not always make sense given the dynamics of an encounter) and instead substituted a Rank 15 Healing Touch, the MP5 values would look like this:
| CF | MP5 | CF | MP5 | CF | MP5 | CF | MP5 |
| 1.0 | 263 | 1.25 | 227 | 1.5 | 200 | 1.75 | 179 |
| 2.0 | 162 | 2.25 | 147 | 2.5 | 135 | 2.75 | 125 |
| 3.0 | 117 | 3.25 | 109 | 3.5 | 102 | 3.75 | 97 |
| 4.0 | 91 | 4.25 | 87 | 4.5 | 82 | 4.75 | 79 |
| 5.0 | 75 | 5.25 | 72 | 5.5 | 69 | 5.75 | 66 |
| 6.0 | 64 | 6.25 | 61 | 6.5 | 59 | 6.75 | 57 |
Obviously, what you use will depend on your circumstances (and sometimes you won’t be able to allow it to disrupt your Lifebloom rotation), but I wanted to show just how much potential Omen of Clarity has just in case some Restos weren’t sure how good it is.
Additional Notes
Druids aren’t the only class to have some form of clearcasting. Shamans, Mages, and Priests do, as well. However, the frequent use of instant-cast spells like Rejuvenation and Lifebloom make clearcasting even more desirable for Druids. Clearcasting procs are determined server side, so it can take more than half a second to find out that your next spell will be free once you’re spell has finished casting. If you were casting a spell with cast time, it’s usually not worth it to cancel and cast another spell that costs more mana instead. If, however, you’ve cast an insta-cast spell that procs Omen of Clarity, you’ll probably notice the proc while waiting for the global cooldown to expire. Gift of the Earthmother, a 5-point talent that reduces the GCD associated with Lifebloom and Rejuvenation to 1.0 seconds, will make these procs more difficult to catch and adjust to, but it should still be possible, especially since there’s an audible sound when OOC procs.
Finally, it’s worth noting that since casing a spell under clearcasting doesn’t use mana, it also doesn’t contribute towards keeping you inside the 5SR. Druids already spend most of their time inside the 5SR, so it’s less significant for us, but consider a situation wherein a Lifebloom cast procs clearcasting, and you switch to casting a spell with a casting time (ex. Healing Touch, Nourish, or Regrowth). Casting that spell won’t put you back inside the 5SR. If you then cast another non-instant spell, you wouldn’t return to the 5SR until after it completes, giving you a 50-75% chance of getting a tick of mana regeneration outside of the 5SR, depending on spell haste, latency, and spell selection. Obviously, encounters where this is plausible will probably be uncommon, but it could be useful in 5-man instances where you generally only have to maintain a triple-stack of Lifebloom on one person.
Omen of Clarity as a non-Restoration Druid
So that’s the good news regarding the changes to Omen of Clarity. The bad news? Unfortunately, it’s still not 100% accessible to Balance Druids; they’ll almost certainly have to spend a couple of “dump” points if they want to get down to the third tier where it resides: 2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild and 3/3 Nature’s Focus (Tier 1), 3/3 Natural Shapeshifter and either 2 points in healing threat reduction via Subtlety or 0.2 seconds off the cast time of Healing Touch via Naturalist.
Luckily, Feral Druids still benefit from 5/5 Furor (Tier 1) and 5/5 Naturalist as well as 3/3 Master Shapeshifter (Tier 2) , making Omen of Clarity an easily-acquired addition to their Restoration investment.
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I dunno, I think the name of the talent – Omen of Clarity, sounds like it belongs in the Balance tree more than any other tree. Too bad boomkins get the short end of this one.
Nice calculations
OoC certainly got better with this change, I just wish it wasn’t that far down along with Master Shapeshifter though, as a Feral at heart I just don’t like the talent tree bloat
I dunno if the PPM got better for us Ferals though with the change, probably would have to know the exact numbers for it first before I can compare it to the new change xD
Congrats however all you Restos and Balance Druids though, this will prove to be a fun challenge in your rotations
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I was particurally excited when i saw that they had changed this talent. To this day i could not for the life of me figure out why they put a MELEE talent so far down the resto tree. Yay on blizzard for coming to their senses!
Seems like Moonkin have quite a difficult decision to make. By lvl 80 there just aren’t enough talent points to take all the higher tier balance options while also keeping enough reserves to go down another tree.
With that said most current Moonkin are used to gaining the benefits of Intensity and/or Subtlety from Resto. While Wrath expands the higher branches of the Balance tree to try and suck up more points I still think you’ll see a lot of Moonkin who are interested in losing 5 points in the first tier to get the second and 3rd tier benefits.
Natural Shapeshifter is quite important for PvP and now leads to a two point, 4% damage increase for Moonkin form.
Subtlety is being nerfed to only affect Resto so becomes useful only when off-healing but the HoT dispelling will be more important now we have Death Knights who can corrupt HoTs to become DoTs.
In the 3rd tier I’d say all three talents are well worth considering finding points to grab. Two help avoid OOM situations with regen and clearcasting and the third is a 4% base damage buff.
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This is going to be a really neat tool. I’ve been experimenting with haste and the 4piece arena bonus recently. Using a natures grace/Imp Regrowth build I am seeing 1.2-1.6s regrowths at around 100haste, making the 1s cast slightly less imprctical to achieve. Both the scarab and the the mystcal dimond actually put it at 1s on the cast timer.
In fact the theoretical limit on this cast is currently 0.8s, very preatty
@Rhen: It definitely sounds like a Balance ability, but I think it’s placed in Restoration to allow all three specs to benefit from it (Blizzard has often viewed Restoration as the tree to put the extra stuff that multiple specs need because both our DPS specs benefit from the ability to improve their healing).
@Andrige: Ty
From what I could tell, the proc rate should have actually increased slightly, as long as you aren’t attacking more than once a second.
@Archmera: Well, it was actually a pretty fun talent to use when leveling as a Restoration. Of course, that was a long, long time ago!
@Shivoa: That’s so true. The stuff at the bottom of Balance looks like a LOT of fun, but I can’t see forgoing some of the Restoration talents you mention. Who knows – maybe Balance Druids will use their second talent template for a deeper version of their Balance build. ^_^
@Arielore: That’s cool; I was under the impression, however, that it’s not possible to lower your GCD below 1.0 seconds, regardless of haste, procs, and talents?
This gearing does’t push the gcd very far but it does begin to seem like an instant regrowth
To be more anal about backing things up, here’s my game tested theory craft.
At a farsical amount of haste (785) the gcd caps out to 1s. At that haste level regrowth base cast time would be 1.33s. If you could keep the -.2s set bonus and added grace procs of -.5s the enhanced cast time would be .63s. So; 1s_gcd=.63s_cast is the current absolute upper limit.
At a more modest (wearing it) level of 172(scarab to 492) the gcd sits at 1.35(1.31proc) and regrowth base cast sits at 1.802s(1.523s). The -.2s set bonus and added grace procs of -.5s the enhanced cast time would be 1.1s(.823). So; 1.35s_gcd=1.1s_cast and 1.31s_gcd=.823s_cast
Haste equations;
New Casting Time = Base Casting Time / (1 + (Spell Haste Rating/1570)).
1s = 1.5/(1 + (x/1570)) x = 785.
Testing results;
I predicted a scarab proc would place the next cast at .823 but I actually saw .991s cast times. My screen shot also caught a nearly OOM dr damage tooltip and sad UI too if you want to peek.
http://i344.photobucket.com/albums/p327/arielore/WoWScrnShot_071908_141350.jpg
@Arielore: Interesting; I wasn’t aware that it was possible to push your GCD to less than 1.0 sec, regardless of haste, talents, or procs. Good to know! Thanks!
Yes, this change is a blessing and a curse of Balance Druids. You see, currently (admittedly in super early Beta) the talents are bloated and expensive. Some people are considering dropping Dreamstate to get Intensity and OoC instead, and even Lunar Guidance is considering being dropped. It seems like no raiding Druid can access Starfall and has to choose between Force of Nature and Typhoon. Requiring 5 points in Wrath of Cenarius, 3 in Imp FF and then all the mana efficiency you can get it hell when they taunt us with these great new talents.
Fortunately, the current proc rate on the new Moonkin Form mechanic is somewhere between 96% and 100%. It’s likely 95% actually. But we all know this will get nerfed into the ground, nay, below it. I have been wondering if OoC would be enough with the new Moonkin Form to skip Intensity.
What they need to do is drop OoC a tier. Therefore Moonkins can get it with only 6 points, all at least partially useful. High-end raiders can still push to Intensity and Master Shapeshifter, but only waste 1 point in Tier 2 Resto instead of 2. This would solve a lot of problems.
Besides that, talent in Balance need to be cleaned up big time. 5 pointers need to be 3, or more powerful. Some talents need to get rolled together.
All the new talents in Balance are very nice, but Blizzard needs to give the min/maxers out there the ability to actually get them without breaking the bank for mana pots.
Fortunately I’m not a raider, but I feel bad for my brethren.
-Sylv
[Edit] my name is actually Sylvanra, I misspelled in the Name blank.
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Happy to oblige!
-Sylv
Sylvanras last blog post..Wrath Mana Regen Calculations
@Sylvara: With the nerf to Lunar Guidance and the addition of Nourish (and how it and Lifebloom aren’t affected by Moonglow), those two talents become less and less attractive to Restos who have previously invested points in Balance to reach Dreamstate. Of course, maybe that’s the intention since come the expansion, a Druid can get Swiftmend and Moonkin Form. They might be concerned about the power of Restokin in PvP (and rightfully so).
I hadn’t noticed the extreme talent bloat in Balance, but you’re right. That’s pretty ridiculous to put talents like Intensity so deep in Restoration that you can’t possibly also pick up the fun new toys at the end of your primary tree. =( I do not approve!
Yes, I’m pretty sure they wanna rub Dreamstate healers out of the picture. And while it’s a nice creative endeavor, I would prefer they make sure that the full specs are better tuned first. But that means that even full Balance Druids have less spell damage and a miserable time getting the mana regen they want, and, in higher end content, need. But personally, with a reasonable rate on Moonkin Form (95% is reasonable, I’ll be sad when that is nerfed), I would be mostly content with OoC dropped a tier in Resto. I don’t have problems with offering hard choices, but I think that currently they are too hard.
-Sylv
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Actually I don’t think moonkins are so bad off on this one.
For a PvP moonkin you could take
3/3 Nature’s Focus
2/5 Furor
5/5 Naturalist
Why?
Well, Nature’s focus is self explanatory. Furor would work well with Lunar Guidance, this giving you more spellpower. And Naturalist combined with the Healing Touch Glyph gives you a nice 1 sec cast time on your Healing Touch, perfect for PvP moonkins.
A PvE Druid could go
5/5 Furor (Optionally 2/2 Mark and 3/2 Furor)
5/5 Naturalist
Once again, same reasoning. While you are supposed to be DPS, whit the change from +healing and +damage to spellpower you can now do some nice spot healing with 1 sec HT. And you might actually feel a bit like a hybrid again, wasn’t that why many of us picked druids in the first place?
@Beider: At the time this article was originally written, Furor didn’t have its Intellect bonus for Moonkin. I also think Nature’s Focus didn’t affect the spell delay for Balance spells at the time. I agree that things are much improved.
@Phaelia
Ops, sorry did not see the date of the article. Saw it linked too on the front page so assumed it was new. Great info about the OOC procs though, guess I need figure out one for feral druids now.
@Beider: No worries.
I find that the omen of clearity isn’t procing often at all in the live 3.0 in feral forms, whereas in casting it seems to proc a good amount. Feral dps gets no love
@Ularm: I’m not 100% sure, but I thought that I heard that its proc rate has recently increased for Ferals.