Fervent Paincaster

The split between this pinger's two modes is the entire design, and it falls cleanly along the targeting line. Aiming one damage at a player or planeswalker costs nothing but the tap: a free point every turn that adds up against control and walkers alike, no strings attached. The creature-killing mode is where the bill comes due, since it demands exert, which keeps the body tapped through your next untap step. That asymmetry is what governs the card: opponents bleed for free, but every time you point this at a blocker or an enemy mana dork, you mortgage two turns of board presence for a single point of removal. The 3/1 frame sharpens the tension further. With only one toughness, exerting it leaves a fragile creature stranded and tapped, vulnerable to any retaliation and unable to even chump-block while it sits out the untap step. So you are choosing not just whether to spend the activation, but which axis of the game you can afford to fall behind on: tap it down to grind one-toughness boards apart, and you have a defenseless Wizard begging to be killed; hold it back, and you forgo the removal you built it for. It is incremental reach for a deck that closes games a point at a time rather than swinging the race in one activation, and the cost structure makes you earn every point that goes to a creature.