There’s other ways to open people up.
You can frustrate them into doing stupid shit like jumping by throwing fireballs into their faces or poking properly, you can walk up on their wake up threatening with a throw, then walk back in time to catch their throw tech attempt with a button into a combo, you can cross them up since there’s no block button and mix that up with with empty jumps into lows to catch them blocking high trying to block the crossup.
You can use blockstrings that push them out of their poke range, look for them whiffing a button and punish that with a button of your own or dance outside their poke range to do the same.
You don’t have to commit to shit like you do in MKX because we don’t have dialup combos except for target combos and are actually able to confirm through visuals and audio cues with a single medium/heavy attack hits or 2 light attacks and finish a combo from there or just don’t do anything if it’s blocked.
SF is pretty different from MK, but a lotta skills also carry over.