I'll be honest I'm a HUUGE Lurker, I don't post or comment much, and work far more than I would like trying to make a living than doing fun things like mod making. [and I did make one little mod a few years back.] But for everyone complaining about TC5 not being for 1.7.10 I'm sorry your being left behind, BUT, here's an Idea, just hear me out. Minecraft doesn't take up too much space, hard drives are affordable even if it did. You can Install another instance of Minecraft to try TC5, and stay current, and still enjoy 1.7.10 and all the mods it currently has.
Others have pointed out the Necessity, and overall the GREAT amount of work going in to REWRITING the mod to work with the new rendering engine and all that fun stuff. I'm personally Enthused to see Azanor bring TC5 to 1.8. I'm happy to see any of the modders out there bringing things to 1.8 Forge especially because the team behind forge makes all these mods able to work together with minimal conflict.
I've still got my 1.7.10 TC4 world and all the mods that are installed with it for when I want to play with that. But I also have this new install of 1.8 and TC5 to stay current with one of my favorite mods. And I'm enjoying it, there's not a WHOLE LOT of things I can do yet, but that all is going to come with time. New Golem Mechanics are going to make automation interesting.
Over all, 1.8 is performing better than 1.7.10 did on my machine, and that's a big plus as well. Enjoy a nice game of Vanilla Thaumcraft 5, if you've never played JUST Thaumcraft and really dig deep into what you can do with the new Autocaster and flux/taint mechanics.[I made one hell of a tainted mess of a large area in the name of science. 
and taint shards.]
For giggles I put a Balanced Shard into the Dioptre It shows the Highest Vis types in the surrounding areas. So that's nifty.
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Any mods that were unwilling to update to 1.8 "because they were waiting for 1.9" are going to be even more unwilling to update to 1.9 - its even more work, and by not updating to 1.8.x, they've taken a large and hairy but bite sized problem and turned it into a larger, hairier, far harder to bite and chew problem. The cardinal rule of keeping change manageable in software development is to break up a problem into tiny bits and attack as small a chunk at a time as possible. The longer an update "waits" the more stuff has to be simultaneously fixed to get the project to even compile on the new platform.
tl;dr - all those mods that were skipping 1.8.x and waiting for 1.9? Don't expect them ever.
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TC5 on MC1.8.9?
I prepared a chest, and crafted EVERY item I would want Repair on. Amor and weapons. Also made a stack of books. This, and a level 30 enchanting station, was built near a mob grinder so I could get more xp as required.
At any rate, each time I hit level 30, I would grab a bunch of items from the chest, try them in the enchanting table. If one showed "Repair" I enchanted it, otherwise I enchanted a book with something useful that I'd want in addition to repair.
I didn't use any enchanted fabric, and using books meant that I had all the Efficiency, Protection etc enchants ready on books to supplement the Repair enchant if the item didn't get them randomly along with Repair.
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Combat is still "wrong" as it still requires a click per swing. The best keyboard-and-mouse melee combat systems have, since the release of Diablo I, been click-and-hold-to-attack. They are visceral in their feedback, work even with variable latency, and help your mouse last that much longer.
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This argument was made when 1.4 was released to replace 1.2.5, 1.5 replaced 1.4.7, 1.6 replaced 1.5.2, 1.7 replaced 1.6.2. Each time was "the time, the best time, for modders to stop udating and just work on the perfect mod ecosystem for a fixed version of minecraft".
And the, eventually, Azanor would get tired of maintence work on the current version, and get around to the big rewrite for the next version, and release the new Thaumcraft. And I'd upgrade along with Thaumcraft.
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If Minecraft itself gets rewritten in c++, then all the reflection, easy decompile of base classes, and ability to 'trivially' insert classes and patch bytecode go away. So the mod "api" would not be done in c++. There would have to be a bridge between the c++ code and the mods - which would probably be implemented in a scripting language such as java or lua.
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To have some fun, and to mention that, if you are having trouble using sponges to clear water from a large area, the builders focus can place a lot of sponges at once, which, with some diligence, can remove water source blocks that would otherwise keep on regenerating.
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Dearest Victoria,
It has been one month now since I set sail for the mysterious Ocean Monument, and I finally have success to report. The rumors we had learn't of from Testificates in the eastern Villages have born fruit; There are indeed sponges to be found here!
Of course, the complex is guarded by strange bulbous creatures covered in spikes and a giant eye that radiats some kind of infernal energy. Just to have them gaze upon you for a moment and one developes an awful itching burning sensation that quickly becomes intolerable. And it was in the bellies of three most grotesque of these abominations that I found the first three sponges. Using these I set about draining the water from several of the smaller rooms, and chanced upon not one, but two rooms containing an additional 30 sponges each! Joy! When I return we will be rich beyond belief with these most rare of items!
Before I can leave however, I need to exterminate this infestation of Guardians - there seem to be an endless number of them - I have murdered countless of the vile beasts. The only way to deal with them seems to be to drain all the water from inside and around the monument, what would seem to be a mammoth task what with the water can keep flowing back.
However, in a moment of inspiration I used the Builder Wand Focus I had been working on this last winter to place rows of sponges and its ability to place so many sponges so quickly can overwhelm the waters flowing nature and allow me to carve out dry areas quite quickly. Pure Bliss I say.
Once I am done I plan to build a small tank to hold a few remaining specimens for later study :- I have amassed quite a collection of Prismarine Crystals gathered from the corpses of slain Guardian abominations which can be crafted into a fragile, but attractive light source - far superior to Glowstone lamps!
I am certain that the Crystals, along with the Sponges, will allow me to amass a dowry sufficient to petition your father for your hand in marriage upon my return,
With affection,
~~~~
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Ok. Assistance please. Pretend for a moment I don't know how to thaumcraft, and I've installed 5.2.1 -
Because its become pretty unplayable...
I mean, "playing thaumcraft" means using the infernal furnace, and other thaumcraft things, in preference for other devices. Just say no the the vanilla furnace. No!
But, consequently, flux in my area has risen pretty high, and I don't know how to deal with it.
* Silverwood trees are NOT an infinite resource. I get back less than 1 sapling per tree.
* Aura nodes are therefore not an infinite resource.
* The new aura node merging mechanic is just broken as it is hugely lossy even if the nodes are the same, or can combine, and if they cannot combine the smaller node just seems to get lost. Plus there is zero control over the node type that spawns.
So, given this, my way of thinking is that I need to find a way to live without using pure nodes. So, deep underground, in a perhaps obsidian enclosed bunker.
But now the paradox - To Thaum I need vis, and to get vis I need nodes "nearby". And as fun as the node magnet stuff is, it doesn't seem suited for dragging nodes long distances. The vis totems also could draw vis from further away, but make the flux problem worse, so they are out of the picture in the long term too.
If the nodes are nearby, and the flux has caused tainted biome to spawn on the surface... then the tainted lands biome is going to reach the nodes and corrupt them.
So there just seems absolutely no way to build a long term base with these mechanics. Every tool we have makes the flux problem worse, and/or is non renewable.
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I don''t know how to respond to this. On the one hand I too don't see why it is necessary to have a set of one-shot wands/scepters that are used to make the one that is actually wanted.
On the other hand, that just speaks to the idea that the wands are meant to be a progression, and actually used for a while. It shouldn't be possible to just leapfrog the middle content in the mod and go straight to the end-game stuff. But, how to stretch the middle area out? The simplest thing would be to route research through some gates, because it is principally the fact that, in TC5, with a supply of ink sacks, you can research ALL the wands, staves and scepters, except the staff core of the primal, in one sitting. So why NOT make the best?
Perhaps the new research system Azanor is proposing will stretch this out.
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1. I like the first change. A thaumaturgist performing research is, surely, going to have a goal they are working towards.
2. Not a fan of #2. Because everyone will just read the wiki anyway.
3. I love the observations idea. Especially the field notes. In TC5 scanning is really odd as there are a few things gated behind scanning, but no incentive to scan generally. Because you are essentially punished for scanning items ("there is nothing to learn here") it is easy to stop scanning, and if you do see a tab at less than 100% absolutely no clue at all what you might need to scan. I liked the hinting system in TC4.2 where it gave a somewhat obscure clue about what you needed to scan to proceed.
4. Lost knowledge is, at the moment, super rare. Barrow dens are not that common, on servers other players have looted everything. Until you get to the outer lands. But who needs knowledge fragments by the time you reach the outer lands?
5. Less epiphanies than researches that need them? not a fan at all. In other games that do that, you can typically create lots of characters, so players get to explore different paths by creating additional toons. In minecraft there is no such option. Perhaps a defaulted to off config setting. It also dilutes your effort: if a player chooses path A, and you do a big update for Path B, they don't get that.