Using heptio ark (or similar) manifest backup solution for disaster recovery?

I understand that right now the recommended way for performing disaster recovery on rancher 2.x is via etcd backups. I’m wondering if it is also possible to backup/restore rancher by using a tool like heptio ark where it simply backs up the manifests.

The goal here is to be able to restore rancher on to a pre-existing kubernetes cluster in an environment where you might not necessarily have access to re-provision etcd or kubernetes nodes.

Any insights on to this would be appreciated, thank you!