Ein und vierzig (or) How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Readiness

It was once said to me:

SV has something not a lot of specs for any class has. Redundancy.

From your ramblings it appears as if you aren’t spec’d to do anything but recover from your mistakes/resists.

Lots of talents there to make traps better - faster cooldowns can conceivably be construed as redundancy, since they certainly aren't necessary for a competent chain-trapper... one with a cooperative group, anyway.

Likewise, Counterattack - it serves precisely the same purpose as Wing Clip, in the end, particularly with points in the Improved version.

But really, one point in the tree stands out more than the others, and I speak of course of Readiness.

Ah, Readiness.

In order to examine the skill, you have to examine its effects - in this case, the Hunter skills that are reset when you click that button. Purely by coincidence, I have a list.

Raptor Strike
Arcane Shot
Concussive Shot
Distracting Shot
Scare Beast
Traps
Multi-Shot
Aimed Shot
Deterrence
Disengage
Rapid Fire
Counterattack
Mongoose Bite
Viper Sting
Volley
Wyvern Sting
Tranquilizing Shot
Kill Command
Misdirection

Immediately you will see that some of them are more worth the 5-minute cooldown than others. Some of the skills above have longer cooldowns in proportion to elevated levels of usefulness, and its these that are what make Readiness so great. I feel I can say without fear of contradiction that several of the skills up there, like Kill Command and Distracting Shot, are criminal wastes of such a beauty of a talented skill.

I'll begin with the obvious: Feign Death. I've used this once or twice to escape repair bills, but only if I am the last person standing and there is absolutely no chance of victory. Why? 'cause it will piss your party members off if you FD too early and they get eaten. Even if they would die anyway, it's worth it to me to take the death so I can share in their frustration rather than being a target of their resentment.

Next: Traps. Specifically Freezing Trap. Burning Readiness to fix that big yellow "Resist" is a perfectly valid use of the skill, especially when the mob you are trapping is of the variety that will two-shot you. This can also be used with some creativity to trap 3 mobs simultaneously for up to 26 seconds, giving your party a head start on whatever is left. You can also release an Ark-worthy flood of serpents with a triple Snake Trap, or effectively nuke a crowd of weak mobs with a triple Explosive Trap.

Double Deterrence is also very useful in the proper circumstances - Deterrence and Aspect of the Monkey together turn you into a bona fide untouchable Mongoose Biting Counterattacking pain in the keister. People are wont to cry "But! Overpower!" at which point I'll kindly point out that Hunters are already Dodge machines, and you're likely already getting Overpowered every 6 seconds as it stands - dodging damn near every other attack they make will still reduce the damage you suffer considerably while you wait for that canary yellow Counterattack proc to fly up on your screen.

Much of what remains is a large variety of short cooldowns - most under 10 seconds. A few of them may be worth Readinessing (Readinessing? Did he say Readinessing?) at your discretion - Concussive Shot is a good choice for this, as is Multi-Shot. It's one of the strongest shots we have, and it can help you load on the damage to a group of enemies before they separate.

Scare Beast - another good one. Fearlock that Druid or Shaman; 18 continuous seconds of Fear is more than enough time for a Hunter to lay on some serious hurt. Less useful in PvE, since Fear is an undesirable method of crowd control, but I'm sure you can find a use for it somewhere.

Viper Sting - Good for giving that caster a piece of your mind in a hurry, 2700 mana gone with no reprieve is nothing to sneeze at even in this world of 10k+ mana pools.

And we come to one of my favorites: Rapid Fire. Combine Rapid Fire with one of the garden-variety attack power trinkets and you become a force to be reckoned with... combine it with a Haste Rating trinket to become a shrapnel-spitting death blur with a thirst for blood.

Or as only some of the 6.52% can do it - first one, then the other.