I tried CM 10.1.2 and while it performed well, I just found it too be a bit too plain, almost to the point of appearing amateurish. That's not a reflection of the CM team, but more a statement of how plain Vanilla Android is. So I started looking at TouchWiz based ROMs because I found I really like S Calendar and its on-screen notifications.
My first try was CleanROM 7, which seemed pretty good. The battery life was not quite what I was looking for, but rather than trying a different kernel I tried a different ROM. I switched to Synergy and switched again in a matter of minutes because I didn't like how much TouchWiz it retained. Right now I'm running Jelly Beans r18 and it seems to be going quite well. I like how it has a mixture of TouchWiz and plain Vanilla options, with a few other options thrown in. If I get tired of Jelly Beans, I'll go back to CleanROM 7 and tinker with it some more, changing and tuning a different kernel and such. And the best think about each of these three TouchWiz based ROMs is how you can tailor its options as you flash it; I believe that really lets you customize your phone without having to put too much work into it. It's also nice that the included launchers, file managers and such are all the same versions available in the Play Store, unlike the old days when CM was running a bastardized version of ADW you could never truly update.
The route you take is dependent upon whether you want a truer Vanilla experience or some polish in your ROM.