The VNAV Step EICAS was always infuriating. Used to avoid it by manually putting steps in the Legs page further downtrack before it flashed at us.
A good way to examine STEP TO and RECMD in flight is to change the Cost Index. A large increase in CI can greatly reduce your RECMD Altitude but the STEP TO will never tell you to descend. Another example is updating the Winds/Temps. A noticeable change from what was entered pre-flight could change the RECMD altitude but once again, you wont get a Step-Descent.