Widow - why choose swipe instead of poison dart?

I must be missing something, because poison dart has 2 small negatives going for it that I see: 1) slightly higher end (~20%) and 1.5 instead of .83 cast time. Does that really offset the DPS loss? Mids claims that swipe does more damage (and I'm not one to argue with mids), but in (quick) playtesting - poison dart is doing more consistently (30 vs 24, plus ticks of 3 vs ticks of 2) - same enemy, no funky toggles on the enemy that I could see. Resistance is to damage type, not delivery method, and they're both tagged Lethal/Toxic DoT - Mids description has PD as Moderate DMG, and swipe as Light DMG, which matches what I saw in playing.

I understand wanting a gapless chain, and I realize that swipe can crit if you're hidden/placating (but, why one would use swipe in such an instance instead of any other melee attack is beyond me) - other than the animation, I just don't see it. It doesn't cause any redraw, they both come from the (completely uncustomizable, sigh) claws.

Do folks just feel weird using a ranged attack as part of their attack chain (seems not, see Gloom from soul mastery), is it for some specific set bonuses, or was there something wrong with my (admittedly very brief) playtesting? I've got to assume there was something off in testing, but it didn't stand out (it wasn't because of follow up, i used poison to lead off).

It's not so much an individual power comparison as it is a global one, to me. Minimizing the amount of time I use low DPA attacks, be it Swipe or Dart, makes sure I use better moves (i.e Lunge or Slash) much more often.

Regardless, Swipe does better DPS and DPA than Poison Dart.

I generally take poison dart because it gives me a pull, and because it offers decent -regen, which works well against hard targets.

The way I play my Night Widow is much like how you would play a Claws/SR scrapper. Swipe fits nicely into my seemless attack chain of FU -> Lunge -> Strike -> Swipe. I still could have taken Poison Dart but I wanted more AoE damage so I went Mu Mastery. There really isn't a wrong way to play a Night Widow since there's several ways to do so, it all depends on your play style. I also think Gloom is also another great option for a ranged attack for DPS.

I did a strange build on my widow where I have a full melee attack chain and a full ranged one. However I tend to play as a melee character most of the time, only switching to ranged when I run into an enemy that uses Unstoppable (since my ranged attack chain has psi powers that go right through it). So I'd say it's just a matter of preference, swipe does do more damage, but poison dart makes up for it with being ranged so it's flexible.