Jeez, I came so close to winning Expert+ Ironman.
I started with Ester + Decker, Powerdrip + Mercenary. I got Dagger (cuz with Merc 3 str firewalls are a bitch), Ping and Wisp (I never had wisp before, it turns out it is incredibly good). As most of my programs were util, I actually found Merc to be quite fine. If you have some way of getting through safes (Xu, EMP) so that you don't have to use it too many times per alarm level (like, 3 is optimal, 4 is fine), it is strong.
I had pretty smooth ride till the very end, no deaths, nor any big chaotic mess that I had to use huge amount of resources to get through. Second to last mission I did have to abort early as it would get ugly fast, so I decided that it was not worth the risk.
Last mission, I had both Monst3r and Gladstone dead at one point, revived them both, Ester was dead too, had Gladstone at the end-game terminal and just needed to get Monst3r to it. It was all the way across the complex, and I was at high alarm levels, but I was doing a pretty damn well job of getting them away from Monst3r, until Decker died, at least.
Soo close