The difference between Modded right now and modded from 1.7.10

I used to love modded minecraft back in the 1.7.10 days with thing like ars magica, thuamcraft, thinkers construct, and all the tech/magic mods. Do to life getting in the way and the new Minecraft update being bad, I stopped playing. Recently though I became more interested in getting involved again. I was wondering how does everyone feel about Minecraft modded recently. Is it fun? What is better? What is worse? whats the best mod packs and why? Basically say any and all thoughts you have, I would love to read them!