Sarkhan's Rage

The conditional self-damage is the whole design argument: this is a burn spell with a tribal tax built into the downside rather than the cost. Pay five mana and you get five damage to anything, but unless you control a Dragon, the spell bites back for two. That asymmetry turns a generic finisher into a payoff card. In a deck full of Dragons the rate is clean reach to the face or a board-clearing answer to a midsize threat; in a deck without one, it is a self-inflicted wound that asks whether five damage is worth the four-mana-plus-red price and the chip to your own total. The "deals 2 damage to you" clause is not a balancing cost in the usual sense (you do not pay it up front); it is a reward you forfeit by not committing to the theme, which is a subtler way to gate power than simply costing more or restricting targets. It rewards the build it was made for without locking everyone else out, since the spell still functions, just worse. As burn goes the mana value is steep, so this was never meant to be raw efficiency: it is a top-of-curve closer for a creature deck that happens to be holding flying fatties, and the instant speed lets it double as a combat-trick removal answer or an end-step bolt to the dome.