I was suspecting it was going to be similar to World of Warcraft and the character level vs gear score. But, you never really know with Destiny. The previous level system was pretty unique so I was curious. I'm guessing then that any of the 25% damage drops applied will be tied to your character level alone and the overall gear score will be an indicator of whether or not you are powerful enough to tackle certain content. The only problem will be nobody will know what gear score is required to reasonable deal with certain content until communities like Reddit figure it out and share it with us. Destiny never really seems to explain its own systems to the gamers.