Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rebound my caps lock to escape and never looked back!
You should (look back). Mapping it to Ctrl is a much more sensible choice. Can’t imagine using backspace instead of Ctrl-h, or Ctrl-A/E to go to the beginning/end of line, or Ctrl-W to delete back one word etc. Of course, Ctrl-[ is also right under your finger tips with Caps Lock mapped to Ctrl.
That's one of the most commonly used shortcuts I use. Not just in vim, but also in the shell. When I screw up on my typing, the mistake is often 3 or more letters back. Instead of hitting backspace a lot or moving the cursor and retyping mid-word, I prefer to say "screw it", hit Ctrl-w, and retype the word. It's faster. My brain is just not optimized to type pieces of words. I can't use muscle memory then.
Besides that, I don't know about you or dmitryminkovsky, but I remapped it to Caps system-wide, so by remapping to Ctrl, I'd be losing a lot more than those shortcuts you mentioned. On the other hand, CapsLock has always been a useless key to me. When I want to type in all-caps, it's less confusing/error-prone to just hold Shift with my pinky while typing. Also, Caps is in a much easier place to hit than Ctrl, so it's more fitting for a key that I hit a lot.