Given a reasonable 50% thermal resistance of the shield, it will most likely take even longer if you chose a C2 laser, due to even less DPS that a MC.
Yep. Engineered shields often end up being more resistant to thermal than kinetic, throwing all initial weapon balance and design on its head. Since energy weapons are generally less capacitor-efficient to use, your effective DPS via lasers would likely be notably lower. You wouldn't have to reload, but you would need more time, and less pips in ENG and/or SYS.