I have both using Karabiner-Elements. Escape when pressed alone, ctrl if pressed with something else.

I had that setup, then I noticed something didn't feel quite right on some apps: apparently sometimes I tend to press Ctrl to enter some key combination, depress it immediately after and it fires the ESC key, which might have unintended consequences (i.e. closing a window I was reading)

Why not both? My QMK mechanical keyboards (and, I just noticed, Karabiner Elements) can support turning Caps Lock into Ctrl+KEY if pressed with something else, and ESC if pressed by itself. Best of all possible worlds.