Guild Wars 2

So I’ve read through the guardian forums for a few days, and I occasionally use Eveningstar’s Guardiian guide as a reference, and I’ve come to the (perhaps obvious) conclusion that I should be aware of what boons, conditions and remaining hp of my friends and foes is.

I’m not very good at this.
Today I was running through one of the first dungeons with some guys who just turned up out of nowhere (<3 them by the way) but with five people wailing on a Champion Spider, things got very spammy and visually confusing.
So I did this thing where… I just stared at my toolbar. Yeah, Instead of looking at the action, I just stared at my toolbar mashing skills with no thought as to timing or strategy because I couldn’t decipher what was going on my screen with all the blue flashes, knockdowns, and the enemy’s hp, conditions and boons, my hp, conditions and boons, my team’s hp, conditions and boons with all these distracting effects going off, all the while dodging awful spike traps, smashing eggs, swapping weapons and… Yeah.

Is this something you just develop a knack for? If not, how do I learn to keep on top of everything?

Most conditions (and some boons) have a visual component. A player who is crippled will limp instead of walking, a poisoned player has a green tint, burning people are on fire…
HP is more guessing, in my opinion.
Players affected by something sometimes give vocal hints. Those are pretty useful.

Yeah, but I find all the flaming dragons’ teeth, whirling blades, radiation fields etc too visually loud to distinguish who has a different walking animation than normal, especially since they may not be walking. I also struggle to see if an enemy’s about to make an AOE knockback or dps attack, so I never know when to use my virtue of courage.