As someone who recently put together a pack for some friends to play around with, I understand the hesitation to put in the effort while unsure of your enjoyment factor for the output. I was introduced to modded MC via FTB Monster, and I had enough fun with that pack that I strongly considered not moving forward as versions did. However, in the end, the glaring bugs that were no longer being addressed (as Devs moved on to newer versions and stopped updating the old) became too much for us to handle.
Since playing 1.7, I've experienced a massive selection of new mods as well as the "core" mods that updated, and some cases vastly expanded. That selection of mods has been impressively stable, compared to my 1.6 experience. I've found tweaking a pack to my specifications to be a fair bit easier than my feeble 1.6 experiment, though having the Curse repository may be directly responsible for that.
My opinion, play what you like. Tinker on the side. If you ask yourself this question again in two months, you'll be one step closer to seeing what all the fuss is about.