Bulletsponge0, on 26 June 2015 - 05:09 PM, said:
when you add the added heat, longer burn times, quirks, etc...things are pretty balanced
The longer burn times don't mean anything because the lasers are doing more damage per second for that duration than their Inner Sphere counterparts with only two exceptions: Medium Pulse Laser and Large Pulse Laser.
Even then, the former has a steep range penalty and the latter has a steep weight penalty.
The Clan arsenal only runs hot when you take more firepower than a typical IS 'Mech in your weight-class can. If you want to avoid running hot, I suggest you limit your laser builds to a top end of around 42 points of damage on anything lighter than 80 tons and a top end of around 36 on anything lighter than 55 tons. You'd be amazed at how well you can do when you can fire more often instead of trying to remove a side in one blast, every blast.
Quirks do not fully compensate, either. An IS ML burning for 0.8 seconds after a 10% duration quirk is only doing a few hundredths of a point more damage than a C-ERML over its burn duration and still does not match the range at all. The heat quirks typically do okay with matching against the Clan cap and dissipation when looking at number of lasers, but not when comparing damage done and at what range it can be done.
It's not all doom and gloom and IS 'Mechs are plenty playable, but in the tryhard zone it's pretty much all Clan all the time because the tech is, simply, better.