Do you prefer IS 'Mechs plus Clan upgrades or Clan 'Mechs?

I had some time now to really get acquainted with the SoK content and tested out quite a lot of builds.

From my testing IS 'Mechs plus Clan upgrades seem to be the sweet spot now. The damage increase you get from Clan tech is great on IS 'Mechs and they are cheaper to repair (armor and structure) after missions.

Example: My Daishi took a few hits to the armor and the bill came up to 800k, in the conflict zone about 1.8mil.

That's prohibitively expensive I think.

Which leads me to a rather sad realization: running clan 'Mechs is a risk that most time doesn't pay off. So you can only really use them when you know your 'Mechs will be rather safe, which is not that fun.

What do you guys think? Am I missing something?