My quest to get Thorn - aka Adventures in Humility

Like some of you, i suck at the crucible. And not just any kind of suck, i have never played PVP in any form so i am the noobiest of the noobs. I deleted the Thorn bounty the first time i picked it up. The second time i let it sit there for months before i started to do something about it. This is my story. My loadout was a voidwalker warlock, atheon's epilogue, a crappy blue shotgun and truth. I barely used AE at all, and can only remember 1 kill with it. Stage 0 - i've ventured into the crucible a few times with a total of ~6 hours played. After getting my ass handed to me in the most embarrassing and frustrating of ways, i basically gave up hope that i would ever be decent in PVP. i never got above 30/500 points and ended this period back at zero. Average K/D probably somewhere around 0.3. Stage 1 - i then went on youtube and watched a bunch of videos. Not of the ridiculous 40-50 kill games but of more reasonable playstyles. i realized that camping with a shotty seemed to be the lowest IQ way to stay above 0.6 K/D - so it seemed like as good of a fit as any for me. Armed with this knowledge i decided to swallow my pride and jump back in. After 2.5 hrs of experimentation, i was sitting on 90/500 and an avg of 0.7 K/D with probably 6-8 kills per game. Stage 2 - At this point i started to have a better feel for the maps and found a couple of go-to camp spots, and could remember where some of the heavy ammo spawns were. With another 2.5 hrs, i was able to get to 283/500 with an avg K/D of around 0.8. I would still have bad games but when the final screen came up, they would still be around 0.6 K/D so i didn't give up ground. i even had one game with a 1.4 K/D and 21 kills, but on average closer to 10 kills per game. This is when i really started to believe. Stage 3 - The final push. I started out ok but without noticing i started to play a lot more conservatively - like a subconscious prevent defense. I was also playing some maps that i didn't know (Exodus Blue, Anomaly) which led to some 0.4 K/D games and the inevitable expletive laced tirades with controller throwing and couch cushion punching. But after coming up the curve i turned things around and the finish line was in sight. My last game was Shores of Time with only 30 points to go. I was defending B when i saw someone jumping towards the platform and it was clear that they missed the jump short - but as they were fighting to get back up the cliff i calmly walked over and shotty/melee'd him - and the little yellow "corrupted hand cannon" bounty popped up on the screen... i immediately broke into a dance of joy (in game and in person) until someone nova bombed me. Having reached the end, i then played fast and loose for the rest of the game with a bunch of mid-air kills and some kill streaks that i really didn't deserve. At the final screen, i managed to get 17 kills with a 2.1 K/D which was a personal best - and i was the highest on my team (we lost but that's not important). In this stretch i averaged kills in the low teens with a K/D of 0.8 (should have been higher but prevent defense never works). So here i am - exhausted from the journey but with a few more hairs on my chest. There are no youtube videos or twitch streams of this quest because it was not pretty. There is also no crucible advice here because i am nowhere near qualified to give it. All i have is the solemn pride that comes from finishing something i never thought i was capable of - and a story that might encourage other PVP noobs out there. Now, can anyone help me take down Xyor? ------------------------- EDIT: Thanks for all of the replies. I've gotta say that the community is one of the best parts of this game. Was able to get my shiny new Thorn today along with Switchfire26 (who also needed to kill xyor) and Jasond1298 - appreciate the help fellas. I'm looking forward to spending more time in the crucible painting fools green with this thing...