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when i'm battling i often ignore the difference because pokemon with high defense generally have pretty high special defense and vice versa. it's rarely super relevant, although it's funny how many people seem to think that calm minding 4 times does anything to prevent a pokemon from being ohko'd by a physical attack that is super effective.
generally if a type is weak to special types it is beneficial for it to have high special defense.
so an ice type will probably have higher special defense than physical defense making fighting moves better on average against an ice pokemon than fire moves
it is almost entirely situational though
