There is so much counterintuitive, strange, and bad design decisions with the laser rifle:

It does low damage up close, but does higher damage the further away you shoot... but it starts doing low damage again once you exceed a certain range. That is just silly, lasers do not work that way at all. It is made even worse by the fact that the game doesn't explain that at all.

Giving a mid-long range laser weapon an ironsight was not a good idea. Even worse, giving it a sight that blocks the user from seeing the beam, no one in CCP testing this weapon before Uprising thought it was a bad idea? A close-range shotgun has a better sight than the laser rifle.

The weapon does damage the longer it fires, that is also silly, but at least the game actually explains it to you when you spawn with the weapon (unlike the range thing). This incentivises players to miss on purpose at first until the laser builds up enough damage, this is because initially hitting your target is only good for scaring them away. This does not reward skill.

How the laser should be:

Damage should not be dependent on range. I propose lowering the base damage to 15, but make it just as good at close range as mid range. Damage should then drop at the 80 meter ranges.

Get rid of the ironsight, give it a sight like the scrambler rifle.

Make damage build on the target, not on the laser. Damage buildup should not be based on how long the laser has fired, but how of it hit the target. The longer you hit the target, the more damage should increase. It will reward precise aiming skill, and also makes sense because the laser should be heating up the enemy's from continuous fire.

EDIT: the damage buildup needs to happen faster also.

pew pew, pew pew, pew