Publishing zip from TeamCity to Artifactory using FileSpec, does it even work? - artifactory

Question

I've tried everything I can think of to get this to work but in every attempt NO errors are returned (the logs say everything succeeded and one file was uploaded) but in artifactory, although the build info is published, nothing appears in the target repo.
I tried using powershell and the rest api to publish, but that just gave me (502 gateway error). Again, no matter what combination of values I used, always this useless error.
I have been forced to revert to using the 'legacy patterns' because this is the only thing that works AT ALL.
The pattern I am using is:
%ProjectPublishDir%\**\*.* => path/to/my/APP/%Major-Version%.%Minor-Version%/%ArtifactNamePrefix%/%ArtifactFileName%
Where all these values are parameters defined in TeamCity. This works like a charm.
However, if I add this at the end of my powershell to create the artifact:
#Write-Host "##teamcity[publishArtifacts '%ProjectPublishDir%\**\*.* => %ArtifactsDir%\%ArtifactFileName%']"
Then I replace legacy patterns with file specs for my powershell step, then I use this file spec:
{
"files": [
{
"pattern": "%ArtifactsDir%\%ArtifactFileName%",
"target": "my_repo_name/path/to/my/APP/%Major-Version%.%Minor-Version%/%ArtifactNamePrefix%/",
"props": "type=zip;status=ready"
}
]
}
The log says the artifact was generated (which I verified on the build agent is true) and that it was sent to Artifactory successfully, but when I check in artifactory, the build info is there but the artifact is missing.
Every example everywhere I can find is too simple and from the basic examples out there, what I have above should work. So what are the docs missing that I am not doing/doing incorrectly?