Rogue decks are pretty cheap actually. You can even build a budget oil rogue which will be more than good enough for rank 19 and let me tell you that you are actually favored against a renolock. Basic decks are for rank 21-25. You can't expect them to work past that, even then people have pushed them far above that. I'm almost legend with oil rogue this season, my deck probably cost somewhere like 3000 dust and 1400 gold to build (two wings of Naxx). I cut Edwin, only have Bloodmage and Loatheb, not even running Boom now. Double oil and pirate are better these days. You have 2x Azure Drake, 2x Teacher for rares 2x Shredder and some other commons and 2x prep.
Rogue is like the only skill based class in the game demanding high level game knowledge of every class and deck, I wouldn't start playing the game with that class. For my alt, it was a great choice, cheap strong deck and my experience from other server helped a lot.
Smurfing? not really, ladder is free for all. You can't expect to get matched against similar players on ladder. Casual mode has MMR. Even then people that bought a lot of packs can have a lot of cards initially.
