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So i've always held to the pretty standard convention that the only units worth using in the dark eldar codex are warriors, wyches, lords, haemonculi, ravagers, and talosi. Recently, i've been thinking about grotesques and whether or not they would be worth fielding. Dark eldar are predispositioned to handle marines but horde armies can be more challenging. Whenenver i've read about people using grotesques they speak of using them in a big line to screen foot troops. This tactic doesn't sit well with me since i firmly believe that a dark eldar force can not rely on foot troops. They are fragile, don't have enough range and their leadership is far too low.

Grotesques appear to be designed to take a hit, so what then to use them for? Against horde armies, haemonculi with destructors are the only template weapon and only weapon that will ignore cover saves. Grotesques could be used to soak up shots fired against the haemonculi and allow them to get within destructor range. The only real alternative would be warriors. which would be cheaper but much more fragile. A squad with multiple destructor haemonculi could use the grots to ignore low strength shooting and exploding raider results, aside from a pinning test.

While thinking about the multiple haemi/grot combo I also realized that this would be pretty effective against a lot of the new stubborn units. The grots special ability allows them to auto break a stubborn leadership 10 unit like a 50 man guardsman squad. A unit of wyches or incubi multi assaulting with grots could spell death for one of those 50 man squads in a single assault.

So the question is: Grotesques, hot or not?

They aren't massively good. They are very tough but don't try to use them for combat. They will just die fast and hard against anything with more bite than Tau.In combat remember they are T3 I3 with no armour save so not exactly steller preformance.

The heamy grottyness is a decent tactic but suffers in 5th due to wound allocation allowing the ememy to pop the Heamys off and leave the grotesques bumbling around stupid. And your point about them not suffering from explosions is flawed. They do take a hit because it isn't a shooting attack per se and so their awesome fnp is bypassed. However as they all have two wounds you have to remove less models than usual.

They function really well in <1000 points as they can draw anti tank away from your transports if on foot.
They can be fun to play. If only for the novelty of having a unit that can take a hit

Not, though they can have their uses tactically and I've seen them used and used them myself effectively in tourney environments so they can have uses it just depends what you need them for. I personally find them of good used paired with a Haemy for WWP delivery and/or as a tool to tie up MCs so the Haemy can use its scissorhand to cut them up slowly.

Just to clarify on the explosion concept - the GW FAQ states that they do not get their FNP effect versus exploding transports.

I'll also note that in addition to Haemonculi we also have Ravagers that can drop templates (and Xenospasms and Kruellah for that matter, but nobody takes it or her and for good reason).