Scorching Dragonfire

The exile rider is the reason this reads as more than efficient burn with a mediocre rate. Three damage at instant speed to a creature or planeswalker is competent but unremarkable; the clause that turns any lethal damage this turn into exile is what widens the card's job. It answers the recursion loops that ordinary burn feeds into: the graveyard-return threats, the persist and undying creatures, the aristocrats that want to die on your terms. Because the replacement effect keys on "would die this turn" rather than only on this spell's own damage, it also cleans up after a chump block or a second removal spell, quietly closing the window where a creature you already committed to killing crawls back. The two-mana cost buys the flexibility of hitting planeswalkers, a target red removal often has to spend more to reach, and instant speed lets it sit up as a combat trick or an end-step answer rather than a proactive tempo play. The flat three is the tax you pay for that insurance: it does not scale, so the biggest bodies sit outside its reach, and each cast trades a point of raw efficiency against pure burn for the guarantee of exile. That trade is the whole design decision, and it puts the card in a specific lane: not the cheapest red removal, but the one you reach for when you need the body gone for good rather than gone for now.