SHA256 altcoins are rarely worth mining for themselves, the very low value and relative difficulty of getting them traded into something usefull usually more than makes up for the ease of mining them.
non-SHA256 altcoins vary - LiteCoin and DASH have been viable alternatives with noticeably more stability over the last half year vs. BitCoin, though it looks like the SCRYPT altcoin mining ecosystem is a few months away from it's first major shakeup since the Litecoin halfing (and possibly it's biggest shakeup since the GC3355 was introduced).
DASH is profitable to mine with a well-tuned GPU rig, though the ROI timeframe makes it somewhat iffy if your vid cards will last long enough to make RoI.
I would agree I was decent into alt coin's during GPU day's and during first asic day's of them. But at a point they really switched to a LOT of pump/dump and a lot are scrypt which BTC sha mining gear will just not ever mine.
The second one worth mining is LTC really and it's scrypt. But a lot of altcoins even scrypt are utter crude. Just nothing but a change of name/picture and promises of a bright future.
I think BTC will remain king as far as mining. You will see it's what the manufactures focus new gear on for the most part. And they do it as most return in in straight BTC in current market.