Beginner path guide

When you started last week, then SLKR is not on your agenda for a long time. After Empire and Phoenix you go for Bastila -Jedis and for Bounty Hunters. Bounty Hunters are critical for the Credit Heist event, have an Assault Battle (so do Jedis), do lots of work in GAC and Conquest (so do Jedis) and are an important part of fleets, because Hounds Tooth. That said, the name of the game is focus. Farm only 1 squad at a time actively, while you passively acquire the toons for future squads. At the beginning it will seem like shards are the bottleneck, they are not, gear is the bottleneck.

I think that you're 'aware' of paths and basically you need to make teams and what teams are good is a great start/advantage.

If there is 'an exact correct best path' I don't know it, and it would be extremely difficult to figure out. Personally, I'm not keen on the SLKR path. I think it's long and leaves you with 2 similar teams. In fact I think personally (and a lot of this would be to do with morale and fun) I'd work on at least 4 core very good teams. Then move onto your GL.

JKR/Jedi, Bounty Hunters, Geos and CLS rebels have all been bandied above. Getting BH to work properly...........will teach you a lot. They're very difficult to get right.

Right now id say, if you are f2p, the best path is phoenix -> geos -> imperial troopers -> Malevolence -> EP + Vader -> Finalizer -> SLKR -> Executor

now what this does, is it gives you a strong fleet fairly early with the geos, that you transition into a malevolence fleet as soon as you can, so you get as much crystals from fleet arena as possible. Troopers will knock out 2 assault battles at ct3 fairly easily, so they generate you alot of income of gear and relic mats as well.
And then you have to start worrying about executors in your fleet shard from the whales, so getting finalizer and by that SLKR should still allow you to climb in fleet arena for a while. And once you are done with the SLKR journey, you should be in a position to gain r8 materials by finding a CPit guild, and you can work on your own Executor. After that, 2nd GL and focus on teams that do well in conquest.

Things id avoid like hell early:
CLS (but once you are getting close to 3m gp, he starts to become very attractive, as he is insane in conquest)
LV (just waaaaay too expensive)
SEE (Even if you build troopers and EP + Vader, SEE has too many garbage requirements, and his value is fairly diminished now with squad arena not giving you crystals)
DR and Malak (costs too much gear and the payoff is bad, especially couse you cant rly get Malgus below 4m gp)