Laser Rifles, like any other weapon of DUST, have two skills incorporated for them. Laser Rifle Operation has a 5% decrease to heat generation per level, and Laser Rifle Proficiency has a 3% stronger cool down per level.
Only they don't
These skills do NOTHING, and not 'nothing' weak like Swarm Launcher Operation, flat out NOTHING.
To test this, I had a Laser Rifle, skilled to Operations IV, and fired it from full to overheat. I got 80% of the charge off (20 ammo remaining). My corpmate leveled into Laser Rifles with a fresh-faced Operations I. He then fired from full to overheat, and got off... 80% of his charge (20 ammo remaining). Noticing something wasn't adding up, I attempted the same feat with the Advanced variant, the ELM-7 Laser Rifle, to see if the supposed bonus of using it existed. I fired it from full to heat, and I got off 84% of the charge (16 ammo remaining).


ADDENDUM:
Adding points to Light Sharpshooter will also increase the MINIMUM range as well as the MAXIMUM, so choosing to have the skill doesn't allow you the ability to fight from further away, it FORCES you to, as it kills your ability to do damage at mid-range.
Credit for this find goes to Musta Tornius

Yeah, I'd really like to be able to invest my sp into lasers and make myself even more unbelievably dangerous. Can't wait for the day it gets fixed and suddenly find that I can shoot people for even longer.

ADDENDUM:
Adding points to Light Sharpshooter will also increase the MINIMUM range as well as the MAXIMUM, so choosing to have the skill doesn't allow you the ability to fight from further away, it FORCES you to, as it kills your ability to do damage at mid-range.
Credit for this find goes to Musta Tornius

Not sure if serious or sarcasm, but if sarcasm - I'll gladly hold up the HMG as a defense to the argument.

I posted this in page 2 of the original thread on this issue but I'm not sure if it was addressed:

Have you guys tried timing how long it takes to overheat? Perhaps that is what increases.

At level 1 you can fire a full 100 mag and it overheats at 20 left. It does the same at level 5. You still drain the mag at the same rate, thus it overheats at the same time, thus it is taking the same amount of time to overheat. It's really not that hard to see.

Can you do a test and prove it to me? You, or anyone.

Fire a laser rifle until it overheats, timing it from start to overheat.
Upgrade your operation skill, and do the exact same thing.

If the times are exactly the same, I'll shut up.

That would tie into Fire Rate, not overheat. Even still, either one would still take away from the magazine. Firing for longer doesn't necessarily mean anything, if you've got 20 left in the mag you've got 20 left in the mag when it overheats; each 'round' doing the same damage it always has. This would actually be detrimental to the design of the weapon, causing it's 'rounds' to be more spread out and do -less- damage.

At least, that's my theory.

Continuous fire increases damage. Longer it takes to overheat means more time at high damage.

Ooooooooooor the more likely scenario: Longer it takes to overheat, longer it takes to get to that high damage point.

Edit: Either way, it's stupid going through 80% of the magazine just to have to reload the damned thing anyway. It should a single ammo pool.

That would be pretty stupid if it didnt need to be reloaded, micro managing the heat would allow you to unload your entire ammo without stopping

Micromanaging the heat as it currently stands is just holding the trigger down until it gets to 25 rounds left in the magazine dude... It's silly.

Also, you're pretty much bashing the intended playstyle of the weapon, if we're basing it on it's skills of Heat Reduction (Laser Rifle Operation) and Cooldown (Laser Rifle Proficiency)

It'd be like me saying, "That'd be pretty stupid if the Assault Rifle could fire throughout it's entire magazine, micro managing the bursts would allow you to unload your entire ammo at perfect accuracy".

edit: That and the fact that you've effectively got four magazines worth of ammo with no skills pretty much sums it up anyway, any idiot who's ever touched the Laser Rifle knows that when you get to that magic 'overheat' point (20 rounds left in the magazine) you're going to be reloading ANYWAY or asking for your own death certificate when a firefight does start up.

you wont be reloading anyway, you will tap the extra 20 ammo into the target then reload.

The laser rifle as it currently stands, in my opinion, is pretty damn powerful, allowing it to use all of its ammo without reloading would be too much of a buff. (but increasing the ammo per clip to something like 130 sounds reasonable)