I hear people talk a lot about the difficulty and gating of Shinryu but I managed to clear it first time without any wipes, so I guess I never saw it myself. I actually haven't gone back to it at all either. Steps of faith however I did have to wait for the nerf to actually clear it. The difference between these two is that Steps of Faith required good group coordination in order to do mechanics and activate the cannons properly, where Shinryu only requires that you follow AOE mechanics and the one button time event. It has been a while though so I might not be remember Shinryu correctly but I do remember in detail my problem with Steps of Faith were trying to keep everyone healed over a vast arena and people tended to scatter so far that there was no way to be in range of all of them at the same time. And AOE healing was out of the question then obviously since some might be in range but not everyone. I guess the point of this post is that Steps of Faith required actual group effort while Shinryu is just a boss fight heavy with AOE mechanics.