Time to max a character

Not really a question that can be answered…
Near launch we could only do 3 attempts on a hard node without refreshing, then 5, then 8, then 5 again, so the metric shifted.

How much arena income do we have to play with for node/energy refreshes?
Is the character on accelerated drops?
Cantina node? Hard node? Ship node? Multiple locations?
Gear required varies widely from character to character as well (especially from near launch to g12 release, and from g12 release to post kyrotech release)
How much other income do you have to drive gearing (guild results in TW/TB, how many raids can guild complete at what tier?personal GAC/raid standings/ Conquest completion, how many challenge tiers can player clear in various assault battles)?

While I kind of think I see where you are leading with this - does it it still take the same amount of time now to go to R8 as it did for a player to take a character to 7 star/level 70/g8 (IIRC, those were our initial caps?) at launch?

I think starting at 0 shards, it is probably faster than it used to be if you are talking about a non-accelerated hard node character that you don’t refresh (5 attempts vs 3, and there is just so much more passive gear inflow and multiple new sources of gear than we had near launch - in terms of a middle of the road player focusing on a single character, I am in no way saying that the current gear flow is adequate for multiple character prerequisite pacing for GLs/event releases) for the average player.