My first Clayface was the Matt Hagen shape-shifter in the old cartoons, but that was always a strange concept for a Batman villain. Nice for variety, but not exactly an Arkham inmate. So I was intrigued when Who's Who told me there was an earlier villain called Clayface who was more of a Phantom of the Opera type, a criminal Lon Chaney who wore a mask molded from clay. And I was even more stoked when Basil Karlo made a comeback as part of Mud Pack.
Unfortunately, lacking a living Matt Hagen at the time, the story was used to turn Karlo into a mud monster, and even into the New52, he's been the identity of the polymorphous creature. I guess I'm the only fan of a properly human serial killer/master of disguise. Oh well.
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I think you're properly justified!
After all, superheroes first appeared to overcome the "normal" problems the world faces. Quite possibly it was more the rule of thumb for the golden age, but I'm just guessing.
Escalation of arms (or exhaustion of ideas?) led to baddies having to be super. That's hardly fair really, cos as Mr Incredible said "when everybody's super, NOBODY'S super." With the super guys beating on super crooks, who's there to save us from muggers, burglars and extortionists? That's why "Spiderman Homecoming" was so good. Someone's gotta look after us little guys.
I remember when Batman was considered a detective, the flip side of your clayface... even by the 80's he still used deduction and reasoning! Look at his score in the old DC Heroes game and his mind was way off the scale. Doesn't need it anymore cos' Alfred does all that stuff with computers.
I do agree with the point that there needs to be variety, especially for more street-level heroes like Batman. I love the Clayface episodes of BTAS, but they are the exception there in terms of villain power-levels. As long as it is mixed in with more human-level stories like "I am the Night" (which even references this mix of super and non-super villains in Bruce's speech: "Sooner or later, I'll go down. it might be the Joker, or Two-Face, or just some punk who gets lucky") And yeah, I also loved Spider-Man: Homecoming for it's relatively low level threat. Not everything has to be the end of the world.
On the other hand, this might be why I have more trouble with Superman's villains. I just can't see why someone like, say, the Toyman is any sort of threat to him. I think Superman NEEDS high level threats, like Brainiac, Zod, and Luthor. The alternative is you do the silver-age thing where essentially he's so bored that he spends all his time screwing around with his friends and potential girlfriends.
Well, almost. It's the Kryptonite poisoning, you see...