Lesser Masticore

The discard cost is what makes this creature honest, and it is the same lever the original Masticore pulled a generation earlier: that card demanded a card in upkeep or it took two to the face, while this one front-loads the tax into a single discard as you cast it. The trade is deliberate. Persist wants to be recurred, and a body that comes back after dying (once, until the -1/-1 counter shuts the loop) is precisely the engine that a discard-fueled deck can afford to throw away and get back. The pinging ability costs four to fire and only reaches one damage at a time, so this was never meant to be a machine gun; it is a slow, repeatable trigger source that survives its own death, which is a different job entirely. What the design is really selling is the collision between persist and any effect that removes counters or resets creatures: return the 2/2 with its counter, wipe the counter, and the death-and-return cycle opens back up. That interaction, more than the anemic rate on the ping, is why the card exists. It is a graveyard-and-sacrifice piece dressed as a colorless beater, built so that discarding a card up front buys you a creature that would rather die than stay dead.