diff --git a/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/condition/ConditionalOnClass.java b/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/condition/ConditionalOnClass.java
index ebc959dbd3..a030852261 100644
--- a/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/condition/ConditionalOnClass.java
+++ b/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/condition/ConditionalOnClass.java
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 /*
- * Copyright 2012-2015 the original author or authors.
+ * Copyright 2012-2017 the original author or authors.
  *
  * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
  * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
@@ -36,9 +36,11 @@ import org.springframework.context.annotation.Conditional;
 public @interface ConditionalOnClass {
 
 	/**
-	 * The classes that must be present. Since this annotation parsed by loading class
-	 * bytecode it is safe to specify classes here that may ultimately not be on the
-	 * classpath.
+	 * The classes that must be present. Since this annotation is parsed by loading class
+	 * bytecode, it is safe to specify classes here that may ultimately not be on the
+	 * classpath, only if this annotation is directly on the affected component and
+	 * <b>not</b> if this annotation is used as a composed, meta-annotation. In order to
+	 * use this annotation as a meta-annotation, only use the {@link #name} attribute.
 	 * @return the classes that must be present
 	 */
 	Class<?>[] value() default {};
diff --git a/spring-boot-docs/src/main/asciidoc/spring-boot-features.adoc b/spring-boot-docs/src/main/asciidoc/spring-boot-features.adoc
index cd7ba70bd3..a517bfd985 100644
--- a/spring-boot-docs/src/main/asciidoc/spring-boot-features.adoc
+++ b/spring-boot-docs/src/main/asciidoc/spring-boot-features.adoc
@@ -6168,6 +6168,13 @@ actually use the `value` attribute to refer to the real class, even though that
 might not actually appear on the running application classpath. You can also use the
 `name` attribute if you prefer to specify the class name using a `String` value.
 
+[TIP]
+====
+If you are using `@ConditionalOnClass` or `@ConditionalOnMissingClass` as apart of a
+meta-annotation to compose your own composed annotations you must use `name` as referring
+to the class in such a case is not handled.
+====
+
 
 
 [[boot-features-bean-conditions]]