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Mass Zealot / Archon / HT is the reason I play mech now, and also the reason blizzard is giving us the new Hellion Transformation in Heart of the Swarm.
If you don't want to play mech, then I suggest picking where you engage carefull, and setting up a good arch and force the zealots into a choke point, and then land good EMPs. You say that you can't always pick where you engage, but I would disagree. Picking where you engage is one of the most important things, perhaps MORE important than unit composition.
Some tricks you can try: floating your factory for scouting, so you are sure to engage in a favorable spot. Also, you can land your factory to create a choke point & force the zealots to charge something OTHER than your army. Or if you can't get your factory in place in time, a mule can force a premature charge from zealots 
Here's the link to a Mech Guide.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=268023
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I'd also like to note, that although you don't see pros use hellions very often in the matchup, equally upgraded BFHs trade favorably with stalkers in mid-large numbers, and trade just about equally against blink stalkers. It should go without saying that BFHs are good vs zealots sentries HTs and DTs (all light units), so BFHs are actually a great unit to counter any type of mass gateway play. Furthermore, hellions are much faster, larger, and durable than marines, making them better at avoiding/absorbing the splash of Storm / Colossus.
With all that said, it appears than hellions are a great unit vs. any protoss ground army. Obviously you won't go pure hellions, so how you choose to support your hellion army is up to you, but I prefer Hellion Tank Ghost Viking as my core units. *sometimes late game I'll have 3+ techlabd barracks for ghosts, and I'll make a few rounds of marauders just to deal with annoying stalkers and support with concussive shell (zealots).
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Immo the game is ridiculous now. Only if perfect emp and zealots are clumped there is a chance for winning. Current reduction of upgrades'cost in PTR is an additional insult to terran. Just because MVP can stutter step 5 different groups of marines/marauder while emping and macroing, doesn't justify the fact the protoss has to only a-move in a favorable concave and terran is MELTED.
Immo late game is impossible to beat a good toss who is on equal expansions as the terran. Emp radius reduction is also ridiculous and unjustified. Carpet storm can be as dangerous as carpet emp, even more, as terran units are smaller and more fit into the same space.
I don't whine about balance, but it seems to me that the toss can stop EVERYTHING, even a double drop, just by warping the upgraded zealots that have an insane amount of health. In contrast, a warp prism on top your production in late game if your army is away also means insta loss.
So my advice to people struggling vs mass zealot/archon/ht/collo is to not allow the toss to reach this favorable combo. You can accomplish this via multiple drops and timing attacks. If things go into late game and on equal footing, you have 80%^lost the game, but if you want to continue, just make marines and ghosts and hope he attacks in a choke so you can emp a good clump of his zealots. Sometimes even this doesn't help though.
You've got it back to front . It's impossible for Protoss to beat Terran in the late game (Evidence: every pro match that goes to the late-game where Terran doesn't make huge mistakes). Zealots are the Protoss ground unit of choice, supported by HTs (which should never get a Storm off with the current EMP radius), Archons (which die INSTANTLY because of EMP) and Colossi (which you shouldn't be letting Protoss build without also building a good number of stalkers, Vikings don't have to be in control group 1 with the rest of your army, FYI).
If you let Protoss build any decent sized number of Colossi when he's massing chargelots, you deserve to die, so I won't cover that (FYI, pure Chargelot/Colossi still dies to MMMV, but requires pretty good Terran micro).
If he's going HT/Chargelot we've already covered how easy it is to EMP (Ghosts see further, have more range and are faster than HT) so all that's left is KITING. In a direct engagement it's absolutely VITAL for the Terran player to be constantly kiting with his MM ball. It's something that is very easy to do (obviously it's made harder if you also want to land all of your mid-battle EMPs and keep up with your macro). You don't need (in fact doing this is a terrible idea) to be splitting your units (unless you have no ghosts and he has HT in range), you just need to stutter-step. It's the easiest micro technique in the game. 1, t, a, click, right-click, s, right-click, etc.
Also, There's no possible way Protoss can warp in enough units to deal with a double-drop unless you have just traded armies in the late game (and if you force him to warp units in out of position at this point, why bother continuing the drop?).
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On November 06 2011 21:34 prOpSaiton wrote:
Blue Flame hellions, whether you like it or not. Though i fail to see how mass Zealot can be effective without colossus/storm against a good ol' standard bioball simply because of kiting and engaging in good positions.
Upgraded chargelots will kill BF hellions any day. They are nice to incorporate if you are playing mechs but without upgrades, BF fall off the grid fast. Also, vikings were mentioned but they have to land to hit zealots and if you split upgrades, you will fall behind the protoss.
Really, the easiest way to handle this is simply more marineswith a few ghosts to emp (even their basic attack deals decent damage to zealots...).
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I found out, after many loses, to always engage the Toss army as near his base as possible (bio army). That way you can kite all the way back to your base, and hopefully there will be reinforcements back there. Wear him out, and force FF. Keep dropping him early, so that he remains in his base. The further from your base you engage (with kiting), the more you will wear him out (you have medivacs to heal). Keep trading so that he won't get the perfect 3-3-3 deathball and A move.
[Edit] Just don't get caught by FF, anticipate them...
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On November 07 2011 09:32 Ktk wrote:Should be: Show nested quote +Blue Flame and Siege Tanks against Immortals/Stalkers/Colossus/Chargelots/HTs. Can't touch it. What kind of player runs straight into a full tank line on high ground! Also your mech build is really at least 50/50 tank focused - and really the tanks and positioning did a lot of the work in killing, well, everything in that game. I don't know how good hellions in MMM would be since the upgrades don't match, and the replay does little to convince me in that regard. I'll gladly say mech v P is cool. However it seemed that that even with center map control everything else was rather vulnerable to counterattack (esp. on this map) which the P failed to push as the game progressed, not a lot of pressure on the protoss with this build minus hellions either. Well, it's Mech, so of course the Tanks are doing the killing. But the Hellions keep everything in check and melt Zealots.
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Best method is a higher rine to rauder ratio, with mass emp's. Main issue with this is you need more reactors on your rax which makes swapping back over to mass rauders harder when protoss do the switch back to colossus, or heavy archon / storm. Marine ghost is amazing vs a lot of the zealot heavy toss mixes.
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On November 07 2011 10:44 althaz wrote:Show nested quote +Immo the game is ridiculous now. Only if perfect emp and zealots are clumped there is a chance for winning. Current reduction of upgrades'cost in PTR is an additional insult to terran. Just because MVP can stutter step 5 different groups of marines/marauder while emping and macroing, doesn't justify the fact the protoss has to only a-move in a favorable concave and terran is MELTED.
Immo late game is impossible to beat a good toss who is on equal expansions as the terran. Emp radius reduction is also ridiculous and unjustified. Carpet storm can be as dangerous as carpet emp, even more, as terran units are smaller and more fit into the same space.
I don't whine about balance, but it seems to me that the toss can stop EVERYTHING, even a double drop, just by warping the upgraded zealots that have an insane amount of health. In contrast, a warp prism on top your production in late game if your army is away also means insta loss.
So my advice to people struggling vs mass zealot/archon/ht/collo is to not allow the toss to reach this favorable combo. You can accomplish this via multiple drops and timing attacks. If things go into late game and on equal footing, you have 80%^lost the game, but if you want to continue, just make marines and ghosts and hope he attacks in a choke so you can emp a good clump of his zealots. Sometimes even this doesn't help though. You've got it back to front . It's impossible for Protoss to beat Terran in the late game (Evidence: every pro match that goes to the late-game where Terran doesn't make huge mistakes). Zealots are the Protoss ground unit of choice, supported by HTs (which should never get a Storm off with the current EMP radius), Archons (which die INSTANTLY because of EMP) and Colossi (which you shouldn't be letting Protoss build without also building a good number of stalkers, Vikings don't have to be in control group 1 with the rest of your army, FYI). If you let Protoss build any decent sized number of Colossi when he's massing chargelots, you deserve to die, so I won't cover that (FYI, pure Chargelot/Colossi still dies to MMMV, but requires pretty good Terran micro). If he's going HT/Chargelot we've already covered how easy it is to EMP (Ghosts see further, have more range and are faster than HT) so all that's left is KITING. In a direct engagement it's absolutely VITAL for the Terran player to be constantly kiting with his MM ball. It's something that is very easy to do (obviously it's made harder if you also want to land all of your mid-battle EMPs and keep up with your macro). You don't need (in fact doing this is a terrible idea) to be splitting your units (unless you have no ghosts and he has HT in range), you just need to stutter-step. It's the easiest micro technique in the game. 1, t, a, click, right-click, s, right-click, etc. Also, There's no possible way Protoss can warp in enough units to deal with a double-drop unless you have just traded armies in the late game (and if you force him to warp units in out of position at this point, why bother continuing the drop?).
Wow, new worst post of the year imo
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One thing I'd like to note about stutter stepping.
It *may* be relatively simple to execute, but it requires all of your attention to keep doing it.
You cannot macro or micro much of anything else whilst you're kiting the Zealots.
Each Zealot has so much HP relative to the damage from Bio that it takes a long time to kill a Chargelot ball.
Perhaps mass tank is something worth looking into. Just because 3-5 tanks get wasted by Chargelots doesn't mean 12+ tanks will suffer from the same.
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If stutter stepping is the easiest micro technique what is the hardest?
Many people think they are perfect at it while in reality they do it at half speed and cant do anything else like controlling vikings at the same time.
Seriously I can control a Protoss deathball while drunk no problem, whats so hard about that.
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I've gone zealot against marauder many times, but it always seems that the marauders can kite FOREVER. Especially with medivacs. I'd just pump more marines, really, try to keep your army as clumped as possible, and roll out in a literal ball. The more surface area you give to your opponent charging, means more time that they can hit.
When they are attacking, the zealots charge and hit atleast once, but if you make them charge ontop of eachother to create a hold on your ball of units, you're able to move away alot easier.
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Russian Federation473 Posts
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As a Protoss player, make sure you have a marine heavy composition and that you pick where you fight. If you have no room to kite, then guardian shield, armour upgrades, collosus/archon/storm are going to hack you to bits while your bio flails inneffectually against my Zealots. Hence why you should be dropping every 9 seconds. Map control 
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I'm starting to ladder ALOT against this army composition now. There are a few things I have realised;
1. You usualy can't get ghosts out in time to really be effecient. I'm finding toss will attack you as soon as that 1st Collossi pops. If not attack, just apply pressure.
2. "Continously Dropping," I've found most of these compositions do have a splash of stalkers in them... However they won't have enough to cover all holes in their base. I will actually drop dead straight on top of stalkers as long as I know there is no more then 3 of them below me. I find it really easy to drop with Protoss who have this composition as my fist gold is to get them to spread what stalkers they have around their base as much as possible. If you can keep the stalker count down, it just makes it even easier to snipe the collossi with your vikings and because they don't have many stalkers, you don't need much of a viking count. Believe it or not, I just played a ladder game against this composition where I took out 6 collossi with 6 vikings! LOL!
So I'm finding as long as you are aggressive with your medivacs and don't let them die, you are continously keeping Toss on their toes. Pick stalkers off at every given opportunity, it definately makes things easier later on.
So keeping in mind you now have stalkers and Collossi sorted, your only worry now is the mass zealots! I've changed to 3 marines to every 1 marauder and it's starting to work wonders! You can just literally just a move your vikings to any stray collossi thats left over while you can concentrate kiting your bio!
I agree, you can go hellions.... but why? Hellions only attack ground and IMO it takes much more micro then what it does marines in regards to utilising the unit against zealots. Not to mention, marines can also attack air and hellions cannot. Hellions would not be my unit of choice against this composition.
In conclusion, I think as longs as you can keep to protosses AA to a minmum it keeps your options open in regards to constant harass, keeping this toss in his base and finally when it comes to the final engagment... more room to spend time microing your bio as you can literally just a move your vikings (no need to worry about unit placement ect.)
In writing all of this, I'm probably completely wrong..... but it's working for me in the meantime.
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On November 07 2011 22:03 secretary bird wrote:
If stutter stepping is the easiest micro technique what is the hardest?
Many people think they are perfect at it while in reality they do it at half speed and cant do anything else like controlling vikings at the same time.
Seriously I can control a Protoss deathball while drunk no problem, whats so hard about that.
Marine splitting vs Banelings is pretty frickin' hard (but wicked fun when you do it right). Kiting/Stutter stepping is something my silver league buddies can do (obviously at varying levels of competency, but mostly quite well) .
As I mentioned stutter-step kiting WHILST controlling other units is pretty hard. However vs heavy chargelot compositions the kiting is way more important than anything else (you can EMP at the start of the battle and shift-queue focus fire your vikings at the start also, hell even a-moving them won't make that much difference).
Nothing too hard about a Protoss "deathball". Just gotta micro your HT-filled warp prism around (this is the only hard bit, most players don't bother), storm, feedback, guardian shield, move your Colossi around and focus fire with any immortals or stalkers. More cerebral than terran micro, but mechanically much easier.
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I really dont't understand why you all hate on Helions so much, I am pretty sure very few of you ever tried them against Toss..
I am a Master Toss on EU and I rarely ever see Helions, although I always go Chargelot/Archon. Yesterday someone got Helions against me, he killed SO MANY Chargelots with them.
It didn't matter because I was like 40 Supply ahead but still I realized how good they can be with decent kiting. You need 5 shots to kill a Zealot even with EMP, but if he goes mass Chargelots you will hit 2-4 Zealots per shot, that is equal to two-shotting a Zealot with a Unit of the same cost/lower building time(lol... really Blizzard!?). don't understand all the "QQ Helions can't do anything"
Sure you can not use 4 Helions to kill 30 Zealots like you do against workers (sometimes) but they still are well worth it IMO.
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On November 06 2011 14:43 althaz wrote:Replay? However, a Protoss player that skimps on Stalkers (which suck) in favour of more Zealots should, simply put, never have any Colossi. You can be a lot more active with your Vikings because without a significant number of Stalkers (which impacts both his upgrades and zealot count) you can mostly just fly around and shoot down any Colossi you see. It's also important to keep up with your stutter step. On composition you've already hit the nail on the head, more marines is good . He won't have many Colossi if you are being active with your vikings and any HTs should be EMPed ASAP.
This.
Key is adapting the number of marines to his stalker count. Once he is down on less than 10 stalkers you can just A-move vikings on the collosus (watch for storm). General rule is 2 vikings per collo. Kiting gives you time to snipe the collosus so choose engagement point carefully.
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EPT
