Your story sounds like mine in some ways. I avoided the Crucible because it kicked my azz every time I tried. Even though I used to be a respectable pvp player in COD, I couldn't adjust to the differences and found it frustrating to play. So after deleting a stack of exotic bounties because of the crucible and the bounty exotics being just plain bad, I decided to do the Thorn bounty. My theory was that I would have to get a little better in the Crucible in the process so why not give it a shot. To make it more worthwhile, I would add any attainable bounties to rank up my crucible (wanted Zombie Apocalypse from the crucible quartermaster). My scores now are still often bad, but I will now get the odd top spot and I don't feel like I am getting molested as severely. I would add the advice that all of the headshot bounties you do in pve and pvp are part of the learning process. It was while doing a headshot bounty that I got my first 10+ streak (i12, including 6 sniper headshots). If I hadn't been concentrating on using the sniper for headshots, I doubt that streak would have happened.