Yeah, agreed - I can't stress enough that I think, as mods go, Thaumcraft is by far one of the most incredible ones.
It truly is a magical mod in every way,
with some incredible, amazing stuff in it. It is unfortunate that it's a "fact of FTB life" that when new modpacks are released, we are going to have to re-do something we've done multiple times before, and the most unfortunate part is that we might begin to have negative feelings towards an otherwise brilliant mod. It's unfair to the mods to hold this against them in any way. I think everybody knows that, but I just wanted to say it anyway.
We can automate plate production using our machines, the manditory "hand-construction" phase of plate-making is very short once you've got it down. TC seems to have gone out of it's way (hello Deconstruction Table) to try and eliminate the possibility of us automating primal aspect production. In fact, I went outside of the game and used an AFK mouse-clicker and some hoppers to work around that unfortunate design decision. LOL Hey, I completely understand it was done for "balance" - if you allow automation of primal aspects during "early-game" TC, you defeat the whole purpose and turn it into a trivial exercise. But... isn't that what we do as Minecrafters? Figure out how to automate everything, no matter how big or how small? 
I may just have found my nemesis, folks.
My main "beef" with TC isn't the grindy research system that is always easy enough to ignore and just turn on easy mode research, nor the fact that easy mode research makes it less easy then the hard mode research if you have the time to spend on the mini-game, but the fact that it looks quite magical, but acts very technological by it's very design goal.
Here's my take on why TC is barely a Magic mod: Internal VS External. Soft styles VS Hard styles. Ying VS Yang. Etc Etc...
A magic mod is in a great many ways about YOU! What YOU can do. Why YOU can do it. How long YOU trained(off screen usually) and practiced, or what fancy snack YOU ate, or what esoteric ritual YOU preformed.
For instance! Wicthery and Infusion. No, not infusing your cat, or that broom you use, but YOU! Fancy stuff, needs you to play it safe and do smart things, and quite frankly, it is truly magical. AM2 as another example; take a normal book, and a normal item frame, locate pool of weird liquid glowy magical stuff, place frame near stuff, add book. Watch the light show. Take back book. Neato burrito, you're now a very weak mage, with the gift and not much else!
And the funny bit? While with Witchery you have to, every now and then, go back to your base to recharge your power with a special ritual, and in AM2, you need to use a block to unlock new skills, and use a cool crafting system to make new spells, one of which is fairly portable but the other isn't due to it occasionally needing other fancy things, both are more magical them TC 4.1 for a very simple reason: While both may require you to go home once in a while, TC needs you to go home quite often. You need to charge you wand. True, that can be done in field by locating aura nodes, or killing things...
But in AM2 your mana comes back no matter what you do. And in Witchery, you are barely holding the power in yourself anyway. Your body wasn't made for that kind of abuse.
And most importantly...
What happens if you give someone your wand, and maybe your focus pouch? They can do pretty much anything you can do. Your armor that repairs itself? Doesn't care if you wear it. That blade that sends foes flying and strikes them with chain lightning? A great gift for a neophyte.
You are just a fella who makes magical stuff. Not a "Mage". Maybe an Enchanter. Maybe a Tinkerer. Maybe even a Thamaturgist.
But basically just an Engineer who works mainly on "magical stuff".
If your tools and armor are why you are powerful, and if lost or given away, you have no real power beyond the ability to create such tools... You are barely any better then a Tech user. Your powered armor with it's jetpack and energy shielding may keep you safe, and your glove may hit like a truck, mine anything you want to mine, do anything you need it to do, and have a coil gun built into it...
But give those away, or lose them, and you are about as powerful as the average joe again.
Take a mage's spell book, what happens? You don't become as powerful as he was. And chances are, the mage then casts a small spells they keep out of the spellbook and blast you and half the city you're both in into subatomic particles.
