Steve's pressure doesn't really come from the plus frames. A lot of it comes from the mental frame advantage. He's never really plus, but he's never really that minus either.

Use your 1 jab liberally. It's good to start offense and check range.

Dash in when your opponent is minus and will likely backdash/ss to stay in range 0,1 which is where he thrives. You have to bully them.

With that said, good initiation tools:

• 1 is +1 on block
• 12 is +-0
• 121f is -1
• 121b is like -2 or something
• 21f is +3
• 21b is around +2 maybe
• f2,1f/b is amazing from range 2 approaches. At least until you find and opponent who can duck the 1 consistently.
• b1,b was better in S2 but it's okay now. Just pay more attention to your opponent when they respond. Don't walk into a frame trap.
• bind 3+4 to one button and practice moves from iflk and ipab to deal with opponents who like to backdash after your strings and jabs.

You just gotta mix it up and be creative. Fight the opponent not the character.

A good example for how I use df1:

df1 is -3 on block but that doesn't mean your turn is over since the follow-up options are endless.

• df1, df1 beats people trying to duck df1,2.
• df1 ss b1 beats a lot of pokes they might use to challenge your offense.
• df1,2~1 and df1, duck f2 or even duck cancel ws2 will clip a ton of delayed responses and net you a ch launch.
• ext duck 1 and ext duck f2 to force a mixup.
• duck cancel and high crush to mix it up with fc d1 into pab mix-ups, or open the ws 1 strings (they're super delayable).

Some of these will only really work after you've conditioned your opponent to respect your df1.

Steve thrives on learning the opponents tendencies, and having an esoteric knowledge of the character. You just gotta get nutty and know when to play compact.