Cinnamon works very well for this. I can put bars all over the place on any monitor.

So I have a two monitor setup, and I really dislike how gnome only lets you have the bar on the primary screen unless you install a plugin that is very outdated and I cannot get working on the latest version of gnome or use dash to dock, and I am not a fan of the dock style…

I believe both Dash to Panel and V-Shell are capable of resolving this issue in a way that should suit your needs IF you wish to continue using GNOME.

I dont have a DE reccomendation, but for gnome you can use the dash to panel extension for a KDE / Windows like taskbar that will sync pinned items across monitors. The multi monitor sync works pretty well on it.

Yes missing mirroring in the KDE Plasma panels is annoying.

Bugzilla report

But I would just stick with KDE, it may get fixed soon.

To my knowledge, COSMIC desktop mirrors the panels to both screens.

I believe that XFCE comes with native multiple-monitor support. It sounds like having customizability for both monitors in terms of dock/panel is important, and I'm not completely certain, but XFCE's panels should be completely rearrangeable and separate. They also have decent power in terms of widgets and customizability.

However, KDE and Gnome have more ecosystem features, so if that's important, you might consider that when switching.

Another thing to note is that if you are willing to invest some time, window managers could be the way to go. Most don't have DE features out-of-the-box like KDE, Gnome, or XFCE, so there is a certain ease-of-use gap. But, if you are willing to take the time to get the features you need and learn the environment, window managers work well with multiple monitors. I use AwesomeWM and configure my monitors with ARandR. You can customize your monitors to your heart's content.

The upcoming Cosmic desktop by Pop!_OS has the exact feature you're describing.

I have my status bar on both monitors by default on Hyprland.

Dash to panel seems to work fine. The only problem i had with gnome on two screens was when they had different scaling.

I'm a big fan of tiling window managers like i3 or awesome (awesome wm). Awesome is the one I use. It's tiling and the entire interface is built from scripts that they encourage you to modify. Steep learning curve but once you get it how you like, there's nothing like it.