Your preferred on-foot weapon combinations?

While I do appreciate that players should enjoy whatever weapons they should feel like using, statistically speaking there is an optimal choice. Shooting people on-foot still feels like a damage-spongey chore to me, so I'm wondering what that choice is, because using the weapons I think are cool is definitely not very fun right now.

Right now I'm trying the burst laser pistol combined with the kinetic rifle, but it still feels pretty weak and I'm wondering if it would be better to run the laser rifle and the kinetic pistol instead, since their DPS outputs are greater than their respective opposites.

So, would it be better to carry a laser primary and kinetic secondary, or a kinetic primary and laser secondary? Would laser or kinetic be better to pair with a plasma pistol? What is the point of the plasma rifle or sniper, they seem to do very little damage?

Also, where the hell do you legally obtain a functioning power regulator?