So I have...

been really enjoying Warhammer 40.000 Dawn of War 2. As someone who has been a console gamer and has never really been into the whole RTS thing, would a game like Starcraft 2 be overwhelming for me or are there other games that would help me better understand the ins and outs of the RTS genre?

Starcraft, IMO is about as base RTS as it gets. It still uses a classic RTS formula (which I miss, and I really miss base building). If you can deal with older graphics...and I mean OLDER, Command & Conquer series or Warcraft series are great. World in Conflict is really really good as well, and because it doesn't have alot of building or resource management you can concetrate on learning strategies and figuring out the basics of the rock, paper, scissors aspect of RTS games. However the online community is pretty hardcore and not the place to practice in.