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You might try something like the Vintorez sniper rifle, or the Vychlop .50 subsonic rifle, which has high penetration. Give it like some sort of HE ammo and it might do pretty severe damage (although this depends on whether you figure the laser just drills holes in people, slices them apart, or blasts a sizable hole in them - all of which are possible.)

Another thing to keep in mind is that when it comes to range, there can be more factors than just accuracy (EG hitting the target.) After all a hotshot lasgun is still a laser, so it should have no trouble hitting anything regardless of range. Penetrating and doing damage, however, can be entirely range dependen (and thus 'effective' range is dictated by those factors) and you could contrive similar rationale for rifles - many of the deforming and fragmenting bullets only do so reliably above a certain velocity IRL so there can be range limits there, and likewise penetration with bullets (especially in steel) also drop off with range. To penetrate something like carapace or power armor might require being very close (I should note that with hotshots 'effective' range is probably not fixed either - its effectiveness against a heavily armored human soldier, or a tough xenos like an Ork/Tyranid will mean that it can be effective against an unarmored normal human at much longer range, although this can depend on how you figure the laser works.

One alternative may be to contrive some sort of lasweapon modification/adaptor that allows you to run it off chemical fuels - liquid, solid (like gunpowder) or whatever. There is a similar device IRL called Compression flux generators and there is some speculation about using those to power railguns. Think of it as the energy gun equivalent of running your Leman Russ/Chimera off of plants and wood bark (without throwing your power pack in the fire.)