dotfiles and system configuration are pretty different use-cases, usually when you do system-wide stuff you want to manage not just the configuration files but also what software is installed and a bunch of other things. Ansible or something else like it is definitely the right tool for the job. And Ansible isn't so difficult to learn, you only need to know like 5% of what it can do to be very effective.
For dotfiles my personal preference is dotbot, but there are MANY many different tools that are all good and are just different ways to accomplish roughly the same thing.
Idiots.