Has anyone else come across this?
I can't think of a single mage follower I have that will actually use magic staffs if I give them to them, even if I take all other weapons away. A good amount of my warrior followers will prefer to use staffs if give them any though. Does anyone have a way around this? It gets a bit annoying as I now have loads of staffs that are way more powerful than the magic any follower mage will use, but they just sit taking up space in the inventory.

Strange. Once I dropped a staff on the ground in the College of Winterhold, started a fight with one of the mages, and remember one took the staff up to fight me.

dont understand what the problem is lol
the mage follower that kills her mom in that tower in the rift caps out at lvl 30 and (in my case) is able to pretty much [censored] anything (including elder/ancient dragons) before i can even see them

I think J'Zargo is the only one who doesn't use staves. Every one else does. With 1.7, J'Zargo uses potions now. On PC all followers have been fixed by UFO and other follower mods

Maybe their spells are more powerful than the staves that you give them? And mage followers only use weapons as a last resort(after their magicka is used up)...

A certain female vampire uses staves. She's not exactly a mage, but she usually uses magic. I can't think of a single time she fought with her weapon.

Yeah she uses staffs you give her too