Very much in agreement here. A lot of people new to normal maps assume there's some sort of voodoo afoot.... all the info is here on the stickies. It's just a matter of studying the subject and applying the research through test bakes and pipeline experimentation.
There isn't a special technique I use for baking. It's just a lowpoly, a cage (pushed out automatically from the LP with no manual edits), and a highpoly. I don't paint anything out. I do low-res test bakes and if I see problems I correct them in the geo itself, like adding geometry to control skewing and shading. It's…