User blog comment:ClariS/A Moment for Clarity/@comment-4937115-20130418010405/@comment-5955640-20130418014332

Mana manipulator is not a real replacement for Clarity. An immediate restore of Mana is far more effective if you or your carry is spamming. Manipulator just means that you won't run out of mana if you can manage it. But that assume your opponents are easy to deal with. If you have to constantly maintain the bush by pushing the enemy support out of it. Or your carry has to harass by using their abilties so they can effectively bully the lane.

It's not going to hold out. Trust me on this. The support should be wearing bead and charm early game so they can rush the philoshopher's stone and to relieve money troubles while also keeping the mana up. Shard of true Ice you should buy (from the Kage's lucky pick so that you have two gold generators) if you want the group aura but that's available at least ten minutes in. Meanwhile. You can hold your carry and yourself in lane with Clarity.

Exhaust and heal are very situational. Heal are for supports that don't actually Heal. And the spell scales pretty badly into late game. Exhaust are for supports that can actually manage to get that close to the target on a regular basis. Supports like Nami and Janna have no buisness being in the distance nessacary to use that summoner spell. Alistar, Leona, Or Nidalee can easily justify it though.