My friend and I were talking about how Bretons are the best due to their natural magic resistance and he said that staffs (or staves) are actually better than hand magic when using a shield. What do you think? I personally think that staffs are better for non-Mages, and hand magic is better for Mages.

If you are a pure mage then I would suggest using spells but use staves only in some situations.

I think a Mage should only use a Staff if he/she is in danger and had no Magicka.

Hand magic is better than Staves IMO.

Some effects can only be used with staves, and they're good for conserving your magicka.

Actually staves are better if one is skilled in the school of magic. Simply, because you get more use out of it. A non mage character using a staff will only get a few shout from it.

Staff is impractical since we can use both hands in spell spamming, unlike in other games where spells have high cooldowns where staff is important, in Oblivion and Skyrim, staff is just for a show, spells have no cooldown

there is no difference either than it costing souls rather than mana and not taking benefit of dual casting (25% less dmg/durability/target level limitation depending on what school you are using) and its stun when perked, you can use shield with a spell in the other hand exactly like a staff.