Battle Moveset

A Good Moveset for Xatu would have to be this:

For Trait: Synchronize

Attacks:

Psychic/Drill Peck
Wish
Light Screen/Reflect/Quick Attack/Thunder Wave
Light Screen/Reflect/Quick Attack/Thunder Wave

Items Attached:

Leftovers

Preferred Nature:

Timid or Jolly

Strategy Using Xatu

Xatu is hands-down, the best pseudo-passer in this game. With a 4x resistance to Brick Break (the only counter to Reflect/Light Screen) any Pokémon using it against Xatu is wasting a turn as far as damage is concerned, allowing Xatu to set up Wish for a fellow Pokémon or even attempt to KO its foe with Psychic or Drill Peck.

- The only common fighting types on the OU Metagame is Medicham and Heracross, and short of the occasional Dragon Dancer, these are the only Pokémon you'll find carrying Brick Break. When playing Xatu on the OU circuit, I suggest carrying Drill Peck instead of Psychic for the super effectives. If playing Xatu on the UU/BL circuits then I suggest Psychic to cover the other Fighting types.

- Wish is there for obvious reasons. It allows Xatu to replenish its own health as well as that of its team.

- It isn't 100% necessary to set up both Light Screen and Reflect usually, and Quick Attack adds to Xatu's utility abilities. If you don't intend to use both Screen and 'flect then go with QA. It can easily switch into a Heracross's Reversal and force a switch or KO it and if you have no other Pokémon on your team that can counter a Sub-Reverser then it's better to be safe then sorry. Also, the occasional Endure Heracross that survives your Drill Peck (via Endure) will meet its demise from QA. Thunder Wave is just there for the irritation of having their sweepers paralysed and forcing some PP use from Heal Bell/Aromatherapy.

- If you have a Ghost on your team you (unfortunately) CANNOT block Brick Break in a similar way to how a Ghost blocks Rapid Spin. So, unfortunately, the only way to stop Brick Break is to KO its user.

EV Corner:

When using Leftovers, one of your EV priorities tends to be to make the HP divisible by 16 in order to gain maximum HP recovery at the minimum cost. It costs Xatu 196 HP EVs to reach 320 HP, returning 20 HP each turn.

Psychic will 2-hit-KO both Medicham and Heracross on average after about 12 Special Attack EVs. You may want to place some more in there to cover certain Pokémon, however I won't go into huge details, since Xatu's objective isn't to score KOs but to pass Light Screen/Reflect/Wish. As long as you can take out the main Brick Break users in one or two hits then that's all you need.

With Drill Peck, you have a 2-hit-KO against Medicham and a 1-hit-KO against Heracross without any EVs placed in attack. It's too costly (from an EV-point of view) to reach a high enough attack stat to 1-hit-KO Medicham so I suggest you settle for a 2KO. With predication it shouldn't be too hard. If you can hit Medicham with Drill Peck as it switches in you are already half way there and if you outrun Medicham, you can 2KO without being touched (assuming it doesn't use Fake Out).

And so begins the next stage of this EV placement. We defiantly want to be able to out-run Jolly Heracross and Jolly Medicham. Jolly Medicham has a Speed stat of 284 while Jolly Heracross has a Speed stat of 295. I suggest the following speed stats:

285 - 136 Speed EVs, +Speed Nature
300 - 188 Speed EVs, +Speed Nature

The rest of the EVs I would place in Defence to give an added buffer to Brick Break.

Final Distributions:

With Psychic:

{Timid [+Speed, -Attack]} 196 HP / 112 Defence / 190 Speed / 12 Special Attack
{Timid [+Speed, -Attack]} 196 HP / 166 Defence / 136 Speed / 12 Special Attack

With Drill Peck:

{Jolly [+Speed, -Special Attack]} 196 HP / 124 Defence / 190 Speed
{Jolly [+Speed, -Special Attack]} 196 HP / 178 Defence / 136 Speed

For Trait: Early Bird

Attacks:

Psychic
Thunder Wave
Confuse Ray
Rest

Items Attached:

Leftovers

Preferred Nature:

Timid

Strategy Using Xatu

This is basically an imitation Death-Star. It has pretty much the same move set as Death Star-Starmie except Psychic > Surf and Early Bird-Rest > Recover. With Thunder Wave and Confuse Ray nullifying your opponents ability to attack you and you can probably force a cleric to use multiple Heal Bells (or Aromatherapies) and force many switches, allowing you to paralyse many Pokémon.

The downside of this move set is the lack of damage. With Psychic as your only offensive manoeuvre you may find yourself with diminished PP rather quickly. Also, Substitutes (and many other moves) nullify the usefulness of this set.

On the upside, you could end up having an entire team paralysed (if the opponent switches around to avoid confusion) or you could leave a Pokémon Para-fused and send in another Pokémon to use some stat boosts. If you wanted to, you could incorporate Calm Mind > Rest (and Synchronize > Early Bird) and make Xatu use its own stat-ups, however I do not favour this strategy since you only have one move to go on the offensive with and have nothing except Leftovers to recover lost HP. Considering how common Tyranitar (and to a lesser extent, Umbreon) are, you could end up wasting all those Calm Mind stat ups. Also, with such a minimal offensive move pool you encounter problem of being hazed and not being able to KO the opponent before the remove your stat boosts.

EV Corner:

Once more, we want 320 HP to maintain maximum HP recovery. So we immediately want to put 196 EVs in HP.

As far as Speed is concerned, you want to have either 310 Speed or 300 Speed, to outrun Pokémon of Base Speed 105 and 100 respectively.

For 310 Speed you require a Timid Nature with 224 Speed EVs and for 300 Speed you require a Timid Nature with 190 Speed EVs.

The rest of the EVs should be split between the defences.

Final Distributions:

{Timid [+Speed, -Attack]} 196 HP / 62 Def / 190 Spd / 62 SDef
{Timid [+Speed, -Attack]} 196 HP / 44 Def / 224 Spd / 46 SDef

For Either Trait

Attacks:

Psychic
Calm Mind
Hidden Power [Special]
Drill Peck/Giga Drain/Rest/Thunder Wave/Endure/Solarbeam

Items Attached:

Leftovers OR
Lum Berry OR
Salac Berry

Preferred Nature:

Timid or Modest

Strategy Using Xatu

This set is for the UU circuit only. It's basically an imitation Alakazam. As far as Under-Used Psychics are concerned, Xatu is the fastest (tied with Jynx). This makes it the fastest Calm Mind-Sweeper available.

- The choice of Hidden Power depends on what type-coverage your team lacks.

- I've left Giga Drain as an option, since it does give some HP recovery and could be helpful against Pokémon who resist Psychic but take a super-effective hit from Grass moves. Unfortunately, Giga Drain is too weak to be considered a main attack. A 'not-very-effective' Psychic does 67.5 damage while a standard Giga Drain will only cause 60 damage (and it is a matter of opinion if the HP recovery is worthwhile).

- Drill Peck is an option for attacking Special Sponges, although it won't do huge amounts of damage and it isn't the #1 choice of moves.

- Rest is there to work with Early Bird. If you can kick off a handful of Calm Minds then Xatu can easily survive that 1 turn of sleep against a Special Attacker.

- Thunder Wave is for the stalling bonus it gives. With the right amount of luck you'll be able to avoid an attack but at the very least, Thunder Wave will slow down faster Pokémon and make them easier to sweep.

- Endure kicks in the Salac Berry when you have been outran and you are positive the opponent will KO you. There are many Choice Band Flyers out there who can pack a very hard UU-punch (namely Swellow and Fearow).

- Solarbeam would be a very useful move if you happen to have 1 or 2 Pokémon on your team that use Sunny Day. If not, then it will most likely be a wasted move slot.

The choice of item depends on the strategy. Lum Berry works with Synchronize, Salac Berry makes sure that Xatu will out-speed most opponents and Leftovers works nicely with the tanking-side effect of Calm Mind.

EV Corner:

First and foremost, you want to be able to outrun the majority of Pokémon. As far as UUs are concerned, the fastest Pokémon (that Xatu can outrun) have a 105 Base Speed. 310 is all you need to outrun them when they have a neutral nature. Timid with 224 Speed EVs is all you need. After that, Max out Special Attack with 252 EVs. The rest of the EVs can be tossed into HP.

Final Distributions:

{Timid [+Speed, -Attack] / Hasty [+Speed, -Defence]} 34 HP / 224 Speed / 252 Special Attack

You could also tweak the speed to 264 so that after a Salac boost it'll outrun Crobat (however I do not suggest total reliance on the Salac Berry if you choose to use it).

{Modest [+Special Attack, -Attack] / Mild [+Special Attack, -Defence]} 106 HP / 152 Spd / 252 SAtk

This gives you a pretty high Special Attack stat and enough speed to out run all Under-used and Borderline Pokémon (excluding Electrode) after a Salac boost.

Strategy Against Xatu

Xatu is a pretty versatile underused Pokémon. It is a great Pseudo-Passing as well as very capable of frustrating you with Para-fusion. It also has decent sweeping ability as far as UUs are concerned, however it is hindered by its offensive move pool.

- On the OU circuit you can pretty much defeat a sweeper Xatu via power. It has equally weak defences and an unimpressive HP stat. Hitting it's multiple (and common) weaknesses, will KO it in a handful of turns (assuming it doesn't have a Light Screen or Reflect set up).

The Physical weaknesses are: Rock and Ghost.
The Special weaknesses are: Dark, Ice and Electric

If it begins to Calm Mind you can simply stick a Blissey, Snorlax or Umbreon in the way and pretty much stop it in its tracks.

- On the UU circuit Xatu is a much more formidable sweeper. You can't simply stick a Blissey or Snorlax in the way and force it to switch. When you see it beginning to use Calm Mind, you have the options of either:

Hazing. Matching its Calm Minds with Calm Minds of your own. Using Amnesia in front of it.

After doing one of the above you will either force it to switch or force it to attack. As with all Pokémon, the most effective way to KO them is to attack them, and that's what you need to do. Take advantage of one of its 5 weaknesses and hit it abusively.

- The 'Staller' and 'Psuedo-Passer' sets are easily countered by a fast Taunt.

Using Substitute before Xatu can use Thunder Wave/Confuse Ray will nullify the majority of the Staller's offence, however that requires speed, and plenty of it. Magic Coat could also cause it some problems but that is a rarely used move and hard to fit onto a team.

Natural Cure or a Cleric are useful for erasing any after effects of the Para-fusion set.

Brick Break could be considered a counter for the Psuedo-Passer, however all it does is really waste a turn since you won't inflict much damage on Xatu after using it. Your best bet would be to KO it first and then use Brick Break, since if you do use Brick Break it'll simply set them up again. Snatch can also screw it up by stealing its Reflects/Light Screens and trapping it prevents it from switching out (in other words screwing up the entire strategy).

Contest Moveset

A good Contest Moveset for Xatu would have to be this for the Smart Contest best with Calm, Gentle, Careful, Sassy Nature:

Attacks:

Calm mind
Psychic
Confuse Ray
Thunderwave

Items Attached:

Green Scarf

Strategy Using Xatu

If you do the attacks in this following order you should have very few problems; 1st - Calm mind, 2nd - Psychic, 3rd - Calm mind, 4th - Psychic, 5th - Confuse Ray/Thunderwave

Locations in Games

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald Safari Zone Colosseum Trade from R/S/E Fire Red/Leaf Green Evolve Natu

Animé Appearences

Xatu has had a few Anime Appearences. Firstly, it was owned by a trainer who used it to predict the weather, after that a girl used it to travel back in time to give her past self a message. After that, it was in a movie like Titanic Episode 236: Xatu The Future! Episode 352: Baltoy & The Ruins In The Mist! Episode 362: The Fim's Riding On Camerupt!