As long as I’ve played a DK, I still hardly understand how runes work. Do they have to regenerate on their own or is there a way to bring them out?
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Runes regenerate on their own. I think they’re still regenerating in groups of two at a time.
Runes can regenerate faster if you stack Haste. Various abilities can cause them to regenerate faster, depending on your spec.
Runic Power, on the other hand, requires action to generate.
Edit: As Bicepspump points out below, Runes regenerate in max three at a time, not pairs.
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I have a good idea on how runic power works, but let’s say you’re in blood spec. What’s the best way to generate runes, then?
I’m not the best Blood tank out there, and hopefully someone will come online with some better answers than I can give. And please excuse me if I say something you already know, as I don’t know what you already know.
Haste is one of our top two secondary stats in Blood (the other being Versatility) this expansion. Stacking Haste is probably the most consistent way to generate Runes faster.
Alternatively, you might want to think about spending your Runes efficiently, in order to have more ready to go at any particular time.
For example, Marrowrend costs two Runes, adds some stacks of Bone Shield and does damage. Heart Strike costs one Rune and cleaves. However, two Heart Strikes costs the same as one Marrowrend, but collectively do more damage than one Marrowrend. So if you don’t need the Bone Shield stacks, and cleaving doesn’t aggro mobs you don’t want to aggro, you’ll do more damage with two Heart Strikes than with one Marrowrend at the same cost.
When Crimson Scourge procs, you can cast Death and Decay for no Runes. I think there are some BDKs better than me who advise that you generally shouldn’t cast D&D unless Crimson Scourge procs, in order to conserve Runes. (For example, the Icy Veins Blood Rotation Guide only advises to cast D&D when CS procs.) (CS seems to proc pretty frequently, but there may be a situation in which your current need for it outweighs saving a Rune.)
Unfortunately, BDKs no longer have access to Runic Corruption/Runic Empowerment/Blood Tap or Plague Leech, which gave us a little more control over Rune generation.
Runes recharge passively with a maximum of 3 recharging at a time. Base recharge time is 10 seconds for a single rune which is reduced by haste. Several abilities generate runes.
Here’s what an unholy DK has to help them generate runes.
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Ah, thanks for correcting me on this. Somehow this slipped past me.
Edit: Though now that I think about it, I think after the Rune system re-work at end of Wrath, they were re-generating at max three at a time (one of each kind), so I don’t know wtf I was talking about with regenerating in pairs.
It was described back in Cata as being 3 energy bars (yes rogue energy bars) in that you can’t regenerate energy past 50% of the energy bar until you reach that point. There were different runes in Cata so it made more sense in that regard.
It did, but you had to spend one rune from each school. Which happened naturally.
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You can have up to three runes generating at a time. The runes generate on their own, but Unholy has Runic Corruption while frost has Runic Empowerment. Runic corruption has a chance to double rune generation rate based on runic power spent. Runic Empowerment has a chance to instantly generate a rune based on runic power spent.
Blood has no such function, but has a talent called Rune strike that has two charges and can generate a rune, as well as the ability for a proc to occur making your D&D cast free of charge, on top of your Blood Boil which has no resource cost.
One way to think of runes is as if they were energy, but you cant use the energy until it passes certain 16.66% thresholds. The only difference is that multiple thresholds can be recharging at the same time (up to three).
Edit: Ah yes, I forgot. Haste also increases rune generation speed. Else we wouldnt be able to do anything during hero 
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