So I have been out of the loop from cryptocurrencies for a bit now and wanted just a brief introduction about potential altcoins to look at? Thank you!

It still has a lot of potentials, i guess whatever FUD that attack altcoin and i will always try to believe in altcoin.
It's a good market especially if you are speculators. Look at how bitcoin has manipulated by the miners. Miners were controlling anything.
Altcoin will always become an alternative way to the bitcoin.