Leveling a DK, need some help

Hello to the DK community!

Well, I just made one and have completed up to level 58 but it's just so confusing! The three types of "runic powers" and the mana-like runic power bar just made me herp derp. Maybe it's just me and I'm not fit for a DK but a lot of my spells say they use up this much runes or that much runic power and I'm just like "wait, wuh? :O"

Anyways, a little help on the rotation / spec or even anything would be really appreciated so I'm not lost in space. By the way, I'm leveling as frost so that I can have at least SOME knowledge once I get to 85 and start in our alt raids.

Thank you for any help given, in advance!

-Bolty
green runes = unholy runes
red = blood
blue = Frost
resource bar = Runic Power

Basically any time you expend your runes on strikes (blood strike, heart strike, death strike, obliterate, festering strike, or obliterate) or any other ability that requires runes to activate (dark transformation, death and decay) you gain runic power. Runic power is expended in our RPdump abilities (death coil for unholy, Rune Strike for blood, and frost strike for frost) hitting with said abilities cause our runes to regen faster (random procs for frost/blood, haste based increased regen for unholy) basically you use strikes to build Runic power then use the runic power to bring your runes off cooldown faster, its a fairly elegant system imo though frost and blood can be like playing whackamole some times

this is just basic if you want more in depth explanation there are some rather good stickies at the top of the page (heartless is really well written for unholy) or elitist jerks has some good guides as well
Ah that cleared up a lot :) Thank you!

Any other advice/tips/info would be appreciated.
well since you are leveling as dps, you are not going to get a good feel for either spec until 81 unfortunately as outbreak is gained at that level and it is pretty much a core skill for both dps specs (less so for frost but still)

either of my specs are good starting points though for flat out raid dps DW is generally better than 2h frost (which is what i am atm for my frost spec) and i am specced into chillblains for an aoe slow for bethtilac instead of imp frost pres

stick to frost presence until you get unholy presence which becomes your go to dps presence

once you get it during boss fights you want to macro blood tap and Pillar of frost together and pop them in conjunction with your raise ghoul as a dps cd NEVER pop ghoul w/o Pillar of Frost buff up

after u get howling blast it will replace icy touch for nearly every situation as you will glyph it to apply Frost fever (the exception being when there is cc nearby.

keeping your diseases up is your top priority as dps at all times as they give hefty buffs to all your other damage

Read the sticky, you'll find it just below the 'New Thread' button you shouldn't have pressed.

Runes do take some getting used to, but just like rage and mana it becomes second nature after playing for a bit.