How to: Laser bolts?

First of all, my apologies if this has been covered somewhere that I just haven't found in my search for information.

What is the best way to approach lasers bolts in fusion (from an animation point of view)?

For arguements sake, lets say the scene is a laser bolt coming in from off camera and hitting a stormtrooper in the chest.

The best solution I have come up with was to draw a shape for the bolt (blur,and glow etc), put it in a 3d scene, and move it past camera to the "hit point", and merge it over the background.
This involves setting a start and end position key, and altering the rotation so it angles along the path correctly. Puting it in a 3d scene gives me the perspective shift, so I dont have to mess with tapering/scaling on the laser bolt shape if it was 2d. This would be repeated for every bolt.

But is this the best approach?
Should I create a path and have the bolt travel along it..orientating itself correctly? (how? )
Or would a particle emitter be a better approach?
Thanks.

It all depends on the look you want your laser bolts to have.
Technically a laser almost has no width, so very thin lines without perspective deformation are sufficient.
Check out the latest Star Wars trailer and you'll see that they're almost all straight lines with no tapering.
Also most laser bolts are no longer than 2-3 frames max, so the method you're describing might be overly complicated. Personally I'd use a 2D approach and do it by hand.

Do you have any actual footage yet, or is this just theoretical?