Yes and no. I think punching above your weight because you prepared well and prepared just the right silver bullet spell or brought the right gear is fine. For example, in one game I was running the PCs were fighting an aboleth in a cavern filled with water to a depth somewhere between 30 and 40 feet. My plan was to have the aboleth do hit-and-run attacks with psychic nonsense and slimey tentacles and such, and really making a nuisance of itself and forcing the PCs to either play whack-a-mole with it or go underwater.
Then the cleric cast control water, lowering the water in the area by 40 feet. So now there's nowhere for the aboleth to swim, and it's limited to its land movement rate of 5 ft. Made the whole thing a lot easier by letting the melee characters just walk up to the abomination and filet it.
But things like hold person and Tasha's hideous laughter are a bit too widely usable to fit in the silver bullet category. They're just cheap.