Seeing that part of Giant Bomb's community is getting more interested in Dota 2 I figured I would list some notable Dota 2 streams along with a brief description. Know that even if you don't catch these streams live pretty much all of them have VoDs that you can watch instead.

Professional Players:

Dendi:Stream - Dendi plays for the team Na'Vi who is most known for winning The International 1 and coming in 2nd place at The International 2. Dendi generally plays the solo mid role for Na'Vi. His stream usually doesn't have much commentary and he is almost always in solo queue all pick matchmaking. If you want to see how one of the best solo mid players does it this is a great stream to check out.

SingSing:Stream - SingSing currently plays for the new team QPAD Pandas. He became well known in the DotA community due to his very entertaining stream while playing for Mousesports. He generally plays the solo mid role, although he will change this up from time to time. He has a goofy personality and there's plenty of laughter going on in his streams. He doesn't take matchmaking too seriously and often tries out suboptimal builds.

iceiceice:Stream - iceiceice plays for team Zenith. He's well known in the DotA community for being a top level troll. He generally plays the solo suicide lane position both for his team and when he streams. He has a very aggressive style, likes to troll in game, and often queues with his teammates. One of my personal favorites.

Educational Steams:

Merlini:Stream - Merlini is an ex pro player who streams practically every day. He constantly responds to chat questions and analyzes everything he does in the match. In my opinion this is the best stream for beginner level players and should really help them grasp the basic and more advanced mechanics in DotA. Merlini has pro level skills even though he is currently not on a team so expect top level plays on top of the great analysis.

Purge:Stream - Purge is a medium skill level player who is mostly famous for his "Welcome to DotA, You Suck!" introductory guide to DotA. He is also known for casting a fair amount of Tournament matches as well.. He streams pretty often and his audience is generally beginner level players. I personally think Merlini is a better place for beginners to go as he has the actual skill to back up his talk, but some seem to prefer Purge so I figured I would mention him here.

Tournament Streams:

Beyond The Summit:Stream - Beyond the Summit is a great place to watch tournament games with a large variety of quality casters. They cast both European and Asian professional scenes and produce tons and tons of quality tournament casts.

Tobi Wan (JoinDota):Stream - Tobi Wan is most known for running the JoinDota website as well as being one (if not the) biggest caster in DotA. He's not the most analytical caster you'll find, but what he lacks in analysis he easily makes up with charisma and energy. Also, he will often have professional players co-cast with him to counterbalance any lack of knowledge he has.

That's all for now. There are many more streams than this so feel free to list more in this thread. These are just some of my personal favorites.

Ayesee is the best caster. (twitch link)

Dude has a voice for radio and a way with words. If you're watching live, he interacts with the chat during the breaks between games (answering pretty much any questions and showing his appreciation for the viewers), and at the end of every broadcast he personally thanks the fans by reading the twitch username of every single viewer of the stream. Such a genuine guy.

Be aware: his ISP is kinda shithouse so the stream will drop frames for 15-20 seconds every once in a while. And although he most often has Draskyl as his co-caster, he often has guests such as Merlini, Na'Vi's Puppey, etc.

As for Merlini vs. Purge, I actually think that Purge is more valuable for a beginning player because he assumes you have little to no knowledge, especially in games that he uploads/plans to upload to his youtube channel. In addition, it's probably easier to mimic what he does on his stream because, like you said, he isn't a professional player, just someone who's pretty good at the game and wants to help others get better. Merlini, for the most part, assumes you have some base-level knowledge, but does go more in-depth on the nuances of the choices that he's making. That's not to say that Purge doesn't, however. I just think that Purge's stream and style are easier to digest for a fresh beginner.

P.S. I was about to call icecubed a trolly addition to this list until I read the description, lol

Also, if anyone is interested, G-1 League Western Qualifier is about to start (two Best of Threes) and Ayesee will be casting them (link here, again), so get in there if you're interested in watching some competitive Dota 2.

maybe add puppey's?

Man, Ayesee is great. Can't believe i am now so addicted to watching something that i barely understand. I knew there was a lot to learn but listening to his commentary, even in the picking stages just blows my mind.

@iamthejuggler said:

Glad you're enjoying it!

I'm a total noob and have caught some of the Daily Dotas, which are fun. Are there good International 3 qualifier commentaries somewhere, or should noobs start elsewhere?

Looking for some specific commentary series / sequences to get into.

@planetary said:

You can watch all of The International (including the qualifiers) for free in the Dota 2 game client. Go to the Watch tab, then Tournaments, then find the Western/Eastern Qualifiers, then click a game and download (then watch) the replay. You'll want to turn on the right broadcaster for each game so that you can hear the casting (GDStudio did the Western and Beyond The Summit did the Eastern, though usually the broadcaster's name in-game is the actual caster's name and not the studio's).

Alternatively, you could go to either of their twitch channels and watch the VODs in full.

@ajamafalous: Thanks!

Just a comment after watching some of the recommendations -- I simply can't stand Ayesee. He uses a preponderance of filler language, and has a really cornball way of emphasizing words (especially "to be" verbs, e.g. "And there is Na'vi, and they *are* pushing back" ... Makes me grit my teeth and shake my fists at the screen!) and phrases that makes me think he wants to seem slick and "sound like a broadcaster", rather than focus on real content. If you actually visualize some of the sentences he utters, they can get 15 clauses deep, and are a contorted lexical mess.

The GDStudio folks, by comparison, are further over my head, but they're much more authentic and interesting to listen to, at first blush.

...OTOH, I'm a baseball fan, so my commentator standards may be unreasonable. :-)

Surveying what's out there is pretty fun. Thanks to all who contributed to this thread for the bootstrap!

@planetary said:

Ayesee used to be in radio before he started casting (and is also from West Virginia (i.e. the rural south US) which is where all of his idiomatic phrases come from. He also uses them when he's just playing with his friends on his personal stream or just talking to the chat (and his personal stream generally only has 50-200 viewers)(how many parentheticals can I add to this sentence?)).

As far as the speech pattern for emphasizing verbs, I think it's a little funny that it bothers you that much. Rewatching some of the inhouses I've casted, I found that I do the exact same thing. It's generally because it's a thing happening that wouldn't be expected (i.e. you wouldn't expect Na'Vi to be pushing back there because of their hero comp and how far behind they are, but they are, so they are pushing back).

I totally recognize that everyone will have different tastes, though. I literally can't listen to Tobi talk for more than two minutes without closing the video, for example.