Given the knives and the steel, it’s probably a distal taper, even if it is very slight. In that case it’s just a matter of monitoring your progress at each grit.
As for the number of strokes I use, I’m of the mind of “when in doubt, use more product” 🙂
There is no set number of strokes that work for everything. You need to account for the steel type, abrasion resistance and hardness. I generally do a lot of strokes, especially on the coarser grits. I scrub until I get the burr/scratches established on both sides of the blade, then sweep until it is a uniform as possible, maybe 100+ sweeping strokes, and then I do another 20-30 very slow and light sweeps before going to the next level.
You do need to check the progress at each level. A 0.1 degree variation can cause issues as you go higher in grit since the stones become less aggressive and might not be able to compensate for the variation. The new arms on the WEPS are super accurate, and you can really dial in the angle cube, but it never hurts to manually check the edge under magnification to make sure the edge of the edge is being abraded.