Which one is better. Meat barb, or beast barb? Are those the only two types of barb builds?

You want your hardcore barb as a tank and your softcore barb as a damage machine.

The percentage of plate wearers just went up 7000% in softcore with the reset, so you'll do fine as a damage dealer.

And hardcore the priority is to live, so you want plenty of life, but you also want to make sure you can actually kill mobs aswell. Just gotta find the balance.

I forgot to mention I only use softcore, pretty much a beast barb is best for softcore?

For softcore, yeah. Damage all the way.