Ouch, no wonder you don't like ECM, you're running an LRM boat. That's always a crap shoot with pubs, to be honest. If I ever jump into an LRM boat just for the hell of it, I just accept that there's a 50% or greater chance I'm just going to be annoyed at enemy ECM coverage and/or a team that doesn't work together properly (really the latter is the bigger problem--no effective ways to communicate, so players generally don't).
When LRMs work
really well are when you have a coordinated team, but then everything works better, doesn't it?
With pugs I tend to steer towards builds that can go it alone when necessary, or at least deal with multiple different situations. If you're really bent on using your LRMs, jump on a Teamspeak server (there are some public ones, I believe) and join a group.
Flamers are never going to be very viable from a strategic perspective since you essentially incapacitate yourself within point blank range of the enemy, just to make their heat go up. Okay, even if that prevents them from doing much you're still not being very effective since you can blow mechs away in much less time with proper aim. You can already do eight or more flamers on some mechs, but it's a waste of a mech. One of the new Firestarter light mechs can carry eight, much more useful than on a larger mech like the Nova, but still far less effective than lasers!