Some people told me to avoid kanji when first starting out and others suggested learning it right aftet mastering hiragana and katakana. Personally, I started learning kanji along side vocabulary, but I didn't focus on it. For example, I learned words, how to pronounce them and what their meanings were. I could figure out how to write them in hiragana by the pronunciation. I would look at the kanji reading for words just to familiarize myself with them. That way when I saw the character, I also knew what it was and how to pronunce it.
That being said, I wasn't really able to write them down on my own. I was only good at recognizing the characters - which was fine for me, because my main goal was just being able to read books and signs and speak and listen. So I didn't focus on writing kanji. Yes I believe it made it easier to learn how to speak because I didn't divide up my time to study endless kanji, but I had to eventually get around to studying kanji legitimately eventually.
I don't think there is a best pathway to learn the language, because everyone is different, and has different goals, preferences and different skills and weaknesses. As long as your learning and making progress I say do it the way that works best for you.