I've seen a lot of people looking for them here and elsewhere and I'm just curious what that's all about. I would imagine it has something to do with breeding, but is there something special about safari Dittos? Because as far as I know they're not really that uncommon in the game. I found one pretty quickly. Do they have special IV/shiny properties like foreign ones or something?
Nightangelwolf
Favorite Answer
A lot of people are looking for Ditto safaris because of this Pokémon's Hidden Ability - Imposter.
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Imposter_(Ability)
Its normal ability is Limber.
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Limber_(Ability)
By combining this with the breeding mechanic, it's possible for offspring to receive inherit the hidden ability, giving it the desired ability generally for battle purposes- for example, breeding a hidden ability enabled Ditto with a regular ability Greninja has a chance of giving the resulting offspring the Protean ability. The chance of the offspring receiving the hidden ability is 60%, provided the other Pokémon is male.
If a female Greninja has a desired hidden ability and is bred with a male Greninja instead of using Ditto, the chance increases to 80%. Suffice to say, a lot of people are using this to their advantage in addition to optionally breeding for 'perfect' Pokémon.
Otherwise, Pokémon with hidden abilities caught in the wild are no more special than those with regular abilities.
Jerry
The Hidden ability is not entirely the reason. Every Pokemon from everyone else's Safari contains at least two(2) 31 Inherited Values or IVs on each of its stats. This would mean that, with the new breeding mechanics for Pokemon X/Y, it'll be a lot easier to achieve a perfect IV'd Pokemon since Ditto is able to breed with literally any Pokemon excluding legendaries.