If you're getting the feat via martial flexibility or similar then dedicated adversary is right up there. +2 to many things is good.
Most metamagic feats are standalone feats, neither requiring prereqs nor leading to much unless you're going for spell perfection.
Some racial feats are organised into chains but others like risky striker aren't. Risky striker is a feat which makes halfling melee types viable on its own.
Combat reflexes leads to about a million things but has no prereq of its own. And it's direly underrated IMO. Blind-fighting is similar.
Additional Traits and Deific Obedience can both be very valuable, depending on your choices.
More circumstantial, but if you're playing a Shifter then you should without a doubt take the Planar Wild Shape feat for scaling DR/SR/Energy Resist.
Many of the best one shot feats are extremely situational or limited by class.
Natural Spell is great for a druid who has access to wild shape, but useless to anyone else.
Command Undead is pretty much required for a necromancer cleric.
Heavy Armor Proficiency is great for a dwarf cleric.
Leadership is about the only one shot feat that will be useful for most classes. As long as you have not dumped CHA and are reasonably high level leadership will be useful.
#1: Leadership - you can basically get a second character
#2: Sacred Geometry - free metamagic, and you don't even need to have the feats. Mathematically, you can'f fail with 8+ ranks.
#3: Quicken Spell - hello action economy.
Honerable Mention: Quicken Hex - ridiculous power boost to Witches.
There also a number of other metamagic feats (like Dazing or Persistent), a multitude of Extra X feats (Arcana, Discovery, Hex, Rage Power, mainly) that grab options that are stronger than most feats, and Item Creation feats that can screw WBL with enough downtime.
Not to mention Leadership veriants like Vile Leadership.
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Combat Reflexes is a terrific one shot feat for any character who threatens AoOs. Longspear is a Simple Weapon. Combat Reflexes provides iterative AoOs.
What other feat can roughly double a character's average DPS starting from level one?
Combat Reflexes (Combat)Benefit: You may make a number of additional attacks of opportunity per round equal to your Dexterity bonus. With this feat, you may also make attacks of opportunity while flat-footed.
Normal: A character without this feat can make only one attack of opportunity per round and can’t make attacks of opportunity while flat-footed.
Special: The Combat Reflexes feat does not allow a rogue to use her opportunist ability more than once per round.
+1 Combat Reflexes (seriously it's hard to go back once you've tasted reach)
+1 Improved Initiative
+1 Leadership (broken)
+1 Extra <class feature> (discovery/hex/etc). This is almost always worth more than a feat.
Also Power Attack. I know it's the start of a feat line, but if you're a melee character with only 1 feat this will keep you relevant.
For feats more specific to certain characters:
Lingering Performance (Bards: triples your performance OR lets your performance continue when you go down)
Sacred Summons (Change your summoning to Standard Action!)
Divine Interference (Laugh at your GM every time a monster rolls a Nat 20)
Weapon Finesse is great. I've made about a dozen characters, most of them melee, and only about 3 are Strength based. Yes, you have to devote a couple of feats and/or a weapon enhancement slot, but focusing on Dex seems to be a lot easier. At least it does for me.
I think probably the two biggest ones mentioned so far are Combat Reflexes and Weapon Finesse. These two feats aren't just good feats, they're character defining - You build your character around these feats rather than fitting them into a pre-existing one. Even Leadership doesn't claim that distinction.
For that reason though, they're probably not what the OP's looking for (correct me if I'm wrong here Douglas Muir 406).
Here are some more "One-Shot Feats":
Improved Critical - at a certain point a scimitar does more average damage than a greatsword, because crits.
Well Prepared - racial pre-req, but it's fun and could be game-changing (there's another feat that's similar, but I forget what it's called).
Dimensional Agility - pre-req is that you have to be someone who would gain a benefit of this feat. The rest of the feat tree makes this better, but as a stand alone feat it's not bad.
For hex users there's the Split Hex feat which is a nice power boost. There's also the Ritual Hex feat; assuming you can make the DCs you're basically getting an extra hex that you can swap out daily. Ritual Hex lets you 'try before you buy', get an additional hex earlier (a level 10 witch could effectively have 2 major hexes instead of 1) or make use interesting or powerful-but-situational hexes that might useful but not always needed.
Teamwork feats can be powerful in the right hands. Outflank is a solid option (though it's a prereq for Improved Outflank). There's Paired Opportunists for those skilled at provoking aoo.
While weapon finesse and combat reflexes are good feats, I don’t think they should be considered standalone feats. They are the beginning of the chain instead of the end of the chain, but are still part of the chain. For the same reason I would exclude power attack from this discussion.
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Paired Opportunists is a monstrous DPR-accelerant.
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While weapon finesse and combat reflexes are good feats, I don’t think they should be considered standalone feats. They are the beginning of the chain instead of the end of the chain, but are still part of the chain. For the same reason I would exclude power attack from this discussion.
True there are feats that have these as prerequisites but you could take Weapon Finesse, Combat Reflexes or Power Attack and no other feat that uses them as a prereq and they'd still be strong options. Really a 'standalone' feat should be one that has no prerequisite feats and remains an effective option without having to take further feats for which it might be a prerequisite.