Slight concerns about repetitive play and power level aside, this is a card that pretty much every white deck is okay with having. I'm not sure the stats are quite on the playable side, but it's probably strong enough at common.

This is an example of a card that looks worse with an additional activated ability than without it despite the fact that all the ability does is adding value. It seems so expensive for something incidental.

You're right; I see it similar to how Kabuto Moth looks weak and useless at its cost but it turns out that every deck wants it. I see it as a skill/experience testing thing; might not be immediately clear that it's playable, but good draft formats have always had cards like that.

I originally had a lower cost, but my concern was that the overwhelming majority of times, you would want to discard a card instead of playing a removal spell/trick or developing your board, so I shunted the activated ability off to "mana sink if you have nothing else to do" land.