My "worst three" list awards go to:
1) Small laser. Next to useless range, low damage, high heat, next to nonexistent chances for energy weapon special effects (steam and forest fires), energy consumption, shields.. All the penalties of several different weapons put together. Pathetic.
2) Power Axe. Marginally useful for recons & lights to boost their CC damage, but if you're going to make a CC titan, you'd better use Chain Saws instead. In other words, this weapon isn't bad by itself, it just has a MUCH better alternative. At least this should reload considerably faster than the CS (or bare hands for that matter) to make it useful.
3) Light Meson Gun. Way too much dependent on luck to justify the considerably poor statistics. If you're going to try to disable your adversaries with any sort of reliablity, use the HMG (or even Neutron Blaster) instead. However, both meson guns/NBs just rock in duels when a crit to heat reg/engine/gyro/jock (!) pretty much scores you a win. While it's propably not the most efficient way of killing your enemy, but at least the NB works wonders in keeping my evil and cruel side satisfied.
As for the weapons already mentioned, here's some comments on them.
SRMs have one major drawback, the reliance on the unguided missiles weapon skill. The jocks that have developed that skill usually end up being my devoted LRM jocks, and mixed designs with both LRMs and SRMs doesn't sound like a good idea to me. However, devoted SRM designs such as Needler and Short Decour (homemade Assault) kick serious booty when assisting other titans by killing all the equipment as soon as the corresponding body part turns red in the scanner display. Also, as long as the pure SRM titan is standing, no other titan (in that team) needs to worry about being shot at, making the SRM design rather suicidal by nature.
Pulse laser just happens to be my weapon of choise over the Medium Laser, mainly because of the +0 bonus to hit (instead of -5) and the heat to damage ratio is clearly superior to ML's. I do agree that the shorter range is a definitive drawback, though not a VERY serious one.
Guided Missiles are actually pretty formidable weapons as such, but it really comes short in being able to hit anything reliably due to the abundance of titan designs with ECMs/Flares installed. That's why I prefer LRMs over GMs any day. They require yet another weapons skill to be developed plus the skill uses Intelligence/Instinct statistics as the base, whileas most other weapon types rely on Reaction/Dexterity, making the GM weapon skill a rather exclusive one!
Flamers and Napalm Missiles are an odd bunch in that you really need to have many of them to make a difference or you might just as well leave them home altogether. Flamers do add quite a nice touch to pure CC titans in that they definitely help in keeping your target NOT shoot that much at you in return, or even keep it immobile via forced shutdowns. Even if you're not aiming to make the whole titan explode due to heat overload, it certainly helps to make all the ammunition in your enemy's titans to explode..
And finally the BRG. If you look at the statistics, the heat/damage ratio is almost the same as with Large Laser, the weapon is just a whole lot bigger. However, since I've learned the power of CC titans just recently, having someone to help them with keeping the enemies grounded at all times is exactly what the BRG was designed for. *evil grin*