Are S-hunts spawn shield a necessity now?

[Hafu]

No.

XIV's community is already carebear and mostly waits for organized hunt trains.

Every other MMO I've ever played world bosses are killed on timer by guilds who know when and where they are going to spawn. Want to kill a world boss, have to beat out other people who want to kill it. In those games bosses give more than a common currency as well, so there is reason to actually care.

The community mostly sufficiently waits for organised A-rank hunt trains because of the way they're ran, S ranks is a whole other matter in my experience.

Unless you yourself are directly involved in working to spawn it, often they've been engaged and are dead within ~2 minutes of any shout-out going out in link shells and discords etc.